CRITICAL PATH INSTITUTE HONORS WORLD TUBERCULOSIS DAY 2012
with a public seminar at the University of Arizona on Wednesday March 21st.
Tucson, Arizona, March 19, 2012 – Tuberculosis (TB) is often thought to be a disease of the past. The reality: Because no new therapies for TB have been developed in the past 50 years and treatment is long and complex, TB continues to kill 1.4 million people a year- someone every 20 seconds. Additionally, drug resistant forms of TB are an imminent publichealth concern. Critical Path Institute (C-Path) joins in acknowledgment of this global threat as it is commemorated on World TB Day 2012 – March 24th – to highlight its impact and acknowledge the work being done to eradicate the disease.
Just ahead of World TB Day, C-Path’s Dr. Debra Hanna will lead a public seminar, Tuberculosis: The Critical Path to Developing a Cure, on Wednesday, March 21st at 4:00pm at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. The seminar will focus on the current global and local status of this disease, and the vital work Dr. Hanna’s team is doing to advance new TB treatments.
Dr. Hanna is the AssociateDirector of C-Path’s Critical Path to TB Regimens (CPTR) initiative, an unprecedented collaborative effort among public and private partners around the world focused on advancing new, better, and faster-acting combination TB drug regimens.
TB is a contagious airborne infection that usually attacks the lungs, but the bacterium can affect any part of the body, such as the spine, kidney, or brain. The disease is often fatal if not properly treated. TB was once the leading cause of death in the United States and is now prevalent in many developing countries.
“Although there have been effective drugs to treat this disease, the common regimen is now more than 50 years old and the prolonged treatment process has given rise to drug resistant and multi-drug resistant strains. A new, effective, drug combination is crucially needed to eradicate this disease,” said Dr. Hanna.
C-Path’s role in the CPTR initiative is to spearhead the development of new regulatory approaches that support innovative research into TB therapeutics and drug development. Since launching CPTR in 2010, the initiative has made significant progress, including engaging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has released updated regulatory guidelines for developing new drug regimens. The initiative is also progressing on efforts to evaluate drug evaluation tools to accelerate the development of new TB drug combinations.
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ABOUT CRITICAL PATH INSTITUTE (C-PATH): An independent, non-profit organization established in 2005 with public and private philanthropic support from the Southern Arizona community, Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), C-Path is committed to improving health and saving lives by accelerating the development of safe, effective medicines. An international leader in forming collaborations around this mission, C-Path has established global, public-private partnerships that currently include over 1,000 scientists from government regulatory agencies, academia, patient advocacy organizations, and thirty five major pharmaceutical companies. C-Path is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, with an office in Rockville, Maryland. For more information, visit www.c-path.org and follow us on Facebook. Click here to view a video showing why the work of C-Path is essential.
The C-Path Vision: Creating collaborations that advance scientific innovations to improve human health and save lives by accelerating the development of safe, effective medicines.