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The Tuberculosis Drug Accelerator at year 10: what have we learned?

Nature Medicine volume 27, pages 1333–1337 (2021)Cite this article

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The Tuberculosis Drug Accelerator, an experiment designed to facilitate collaboration in tuberculosis drug discovery by breaking down barriers among competing labs and institutions, has reached a 10-year landmark. We review the consortium’s achievements, advantages and limitations and advocate for the application of similar models to other diseases.

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Fig. 1: Overview of TBDA activities.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA

    Bree B. Aldridge

  2. GlaxoSmithKline, Tres Cantos, Spain

    David Barros-Aguirre, Robert H. Bates & Joël Lelièvre

  3. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Clifton E. Barry III & Helena I. Boshoff

  4. Panorama Global, Seattle, WA, USA

    Steven J. Berthel

  5. University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Kelly Chibale & Valerie Mizrahi

  6. Global Health Drug Discovery Institute, Beijing, China

    Xin-Jie Chu & Ying Yuan

  7. Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, New York, NY, USA

    Christopher B. Cooper & Nader Fotouhi

  8. Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery & Innovation, Nutley, NJ, USA

    Véronique Dartois

  9. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ken Duncan & Peter Warner

  10. Eisai, Andover, MA, USA

    Fabian Gusovsky

  11. Lgenia, Fortville, IN, USA

    Philip A. Hipskind

  12. AbbVie, North Chicago, IL, USA

    Dale J. Kempf & Michael Schrimpf

  13. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anne J. Lenaerts & Gregory T. Robertson

  14. Calibr, a division of the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Case W. McNamara & H. Michael Petrassi

  15. Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Carl Nathan, Kyu Y. Rhee & Dirk Schnappinger

  16. Merck & Co., West Point, PA, USA

    David B. Olsen

  17. Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA

    Tanya Parish

  18. Janssen-Cilag, Buckinghamshire, UK

    Alexander Pym

  19. The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA

    Jeremy Michael Rock

  20. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Eric J. Rubin

  21. Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Betsy Russell

  22. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    David G. Russell

  23. Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    James C. Sacchettini

  24. Evotec, Lyon, France

    Anna M. Upton

  25. Drug Discovery Unit, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland

    Paul Graham Wyatt

Authors
  1. Bree B. Aldridge
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  2. David Barros-Aguirre
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  11. Ken Duncan
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  33. Michael Schrimpf
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  34. Anna M. Upton
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  35. Peter Warner
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  36. Paul Graham Wyatt
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  37. Ying Yuan
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Contributions

C.E.B., R.H.B., S.J.B., K.D., N.F., V.M., C.N., B.R. and P.W. served as the drafting committee; C.E.B. prepared the figure with assistance from B.B.A., H.I.B., V.D., K.D., K.Y.R. and J.C.S.; and D.B.-A., K.C., X.-J.C., C.B.C., F.G., P.A.H., D.J.., J.L., A.J.L., C.W.M., D.B.O., T.P., H.M.P., A.P., G.T.R., J.M.R., E.J.R., D.G.R., D.S., M.S., A.M.U., P.G.W. and Y.Y. contributed comments.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carl Nathan.

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Competing interests

D.B.-A., R.H.B. and J.L. are employed by GlaxoSmithKline; F.G. is employed by Eisai; P.A.H. is employed by Lgenia; D.J.K. and M.S. are employed by AbbVie; D.B.O. is employed by Merck & Co.; H.M.P. is employed by Calibr; A.P. is employed by Janssen-Cilag; and A.M.U. is employed by Evotec.

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Aldridge, B.B., Barros-Aguirre, D., Barry, C.E. et al. The Tuberculosis Drug Accelerator at year 10: what have we learned?. Nat Med 27, 1333–1337 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01442-2

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