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News | 24/03/2022

World Tuberculosis Day 2022: Saving lives

"Invest to end tuberculosis. Save lives" is the theme of this year's World Tuberculosis Day, which draws attention to the relevance and global spread of this deadly infectious disease every year on March 24. As an associated partner of the international research consortium UNITE4TB (short for: "Academia and industry united innovation and treatment for tuberculosis"), LMU Klinikum München - together with the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) - plays a leading role in research efforts to combat the spread and severity of this deadly disease.
UNITE4TB

The annual World Tuberculosis Day is a reminder that TB remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with 10 million new cases and 1.5 million deaths per year. Despite significant control successes in recent decades, the spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria and the many negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have set back global progress in the fight against tuberculosis by years.

TB is preventable and curable

Launched in 2021 and funded with 185 million euros over seven years, the UNITE4TB research platform brings together academia and industry to develop effective combinations for urgently needed new tuberculosis therapies and accelerate their clinical evaluation.

Scientists at the LMU Klinikum and DZIF are involved in the development of new TB drugs and new biomarkers for the individual treatment of TB patients as part of UNITE4B and other projects. Using state-of-the-art diagnostic methods, the researchers are also monitoring the occurrence and spread of tuberculosis in European and African populations.

Investments save lives

With modern therapies and sufficient resources, the spread of the disease could be stopped. In its global strategy to end TB, the World Health Organization set itself the ambitious goal in 2018 of reducing the number of TB deaths by 90 percent and the spread of TB by 80 percent by 2030 (compared to 2015). However, more investment in TB-related activities is urgently needed to achieve this goal.

"As part of the UNITE4TB project, for the first time in the history of TB drug research, all manufacturers are working together with drugs in phase 2 clinical trials. This will make it possible to provide urgently needed combination therapies more quickly," says Prof. Michael Hoelscher, Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at LMU Klinikum München, coordinator of the DZIF research area "Tuberculosis" and initiator and scientific director of UNITE4TB.

The UNITE4TB project is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement no. 101007873. This Joint Undertaking is supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and EFPIA, the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). EFPIA/AP contribute 50 percent of the funding, while the contribution of the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) and the LMU Klinikum München was granted by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).