MMP and John Hopkins University signed an agreement on a drug for tuberculosis

On January 25, 2017 The Medicines Patent Pool announced that it has signed an agreement with Johns Hopkins University to ensure the clinical development of the drug sutezolid. Sutezolid is an investigational drug to treat tuberculosis and might help to treat both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB more effectively in combination with other drugs.

The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is a United Nations-backed organization founded in July 2010 with the primary goal to lower the prices of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C medicines and ensure access to these drugs for poor and developing countries.  The MPP is fully funded by UNITAID.

According to The World Health Organization (WHO), TB was responsible for more than 1.4 million deaths in 2015, including 0.4 million among people living with HIV.

“The MPP-John Hopkins University agreement is an extraordinary step as it seeks to jump-start currently stalled development on a compound that showed promise in early stage trials. The current scarcity of treatment options is threatening to derail the WHO’s global targets to slash TB deaths by 95% over the next two decades. We are in urgent need of new and better combination regimens, especially for patients with multidrug-resistant TB, and the inclusion of sutezolid might bring great benefit,” said Mario Raviglione, Director of the Global TB Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO).