On world TB Day 2025, NovaBiotics Ltd (NovaBiotics) and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) announce that they are working together to investigate the use of oral cysteamine bitartrate in the treatment of mycobacterial disease, including tuberculosis (TB).
NovaBiotics’ preclinical and clinical work in chronic respiratory infection has already demonstrated the unique, dual antimicrobial and host-directed activities of cysteamine and that mycobacteria (non-tuberculosis mycobacteria of relevance to cystic fibrosis and non-CF respiratory disease) are particularly sensitive to cysteamine’s effects. In addition, cysteamine bitartrate is attractive as a therapy candidate as regards risk profile as it has been in clinical use for an unrelated condition metabolic for over 30 years.
LSTM has world-leading expertise and capabilities in mycobacterial disease research, with access to the most appropriate clinical isolates, best in class tools and models with which to assess the clinical potential of new treatments which can hopefully be rapidly translated to clinical investigation and practice, adjunct to current standard of care. The goal of this collaboration is to improve patient outcomes by more effectively and rapidly resolving mycobacterial burden and disease symptomology. The collaboration, which at LSTM is led by Dr Daire Cantillon, is currently focused on assessing cysteamine’s potentiation of antimicrobial therapies for drug-resistant as well as drug-sensitive strains of TB and the mechanisms through which it potentiates and reverses clinical resistance. It will also explore cysteamine’s host-directed effects which may be of significant additional benefit in a clinical setting.
The collaboration has already generated some encouraging data, and both parties look forward to this being a platform for advancing their partnership in the future, the ambition being to adapt current standard of care regimens to TB and mycobacterial infections more broadly, by developing globally accessible and equitable intervention strategies targeting the massive unmet burden of these diseases.
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