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P14007
Antituberculosis High-Throughput Dug Screening at Southern Research Institute
Presenter Lucile White, Southern Research Institute, USA
Additional Authors: William Suling, Subramaniam Ananthan, Lynn Rasmussen, John A. Secrist III, and Robert C. Reynolds

The global burden of tuberculosis (TB) remains enormous. An estimated 3 million people worldwide die of tuberculosis each year and another 1.7 billion are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). An increase in the incidence of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR TB) and the recent emergence of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR TB), especially in developing countries, underscores the current need for new drugs to treat these infections. The Tuberculosis Antimicrobial Acquisition and Coordinating Facility (TAACF) was established in 1994 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to facilitate the discovery of new antitubercular drugs. The program, managed by Southern Research Institute, assists commercial, academic and government laboratories worldwide in identifying new chemical classes of compounds for evaluation in in vitro and in vivo models. Through the direction and funds of NIAID, Southern Research Institute added high-throughput screening (HTS) services to the program in the fall of 2001 (NIH-NIAID Antimicrobial Drug Screening Contract; N01-A1-15449). The HTS component allows for screening of large compound libraries against specific validated targets and expanding the primary in vitro screening efforts to a high-throughput format. The efforts through this program have resulted in the identification of several promising compounds that have entered advanced evaluations in animal models. The promises and challenges of the HTS component of this NIH program will be presented.