Indian centre seeks TB cure

By Richard Black
BBC Science correspondent

TB kills up to two million people a year

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has opened a new research centre in India aimed at finding new treatments for tuberculosis.

The Anglo-Swedish company says that drugs developed at its Bangalore centre will be made available at low cost in developing countries.

Tuberculosis kills around two million people each year, and the infection rate is rising.

AstraZeneca hopes the modern science of genomics will help it develop a new generation of TB drugs.

The company points out that it has been four decades since the last major development in treatment.

New drug needed

AstraZeneca will make any TB medicines discovered in these laboratories available for clinical development and supply to the worlds poorest countries at low prices

AstraZeneca chief executive Tom McKillop

Current drugs for TB are generally highly effective but there are two major problems.

Patients have to take the drugs for six months - which means that many do not finish their course - and drug-resistant strains are now spreading.

The World Health Organization says that new treatments are desperately needed to restrain the spread of TB, which is on the rise in several parts of the developing world and most notably in the former Soviet Union.

The key to success though will be the price.

A full course of existing drugs costs around $10 in the poorest nations.

As we have seen in recent years with Aids drugs, pharmaceutical companies have not always been willing to make their newer products available at such low cost.