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Advancing the TB drug development pipeline: A look back at the 2024 UNITE4TB Annual Meeting & Joint Symposium
The 2024 UNITE4TB Annual Consortium Meeting and Joint Symposium with ERA4TB took place on 15-17 May in Sweden, kindly hosted by Consortium Partner, Uppsala University. The event generated many valuable insights and lively scientific discussions, providing attendees with a solid overview of the current status of both projects and our ambitions for the future.
Joint UNITE4TB-ERA4TB Symposium
The three days in Uppsala kicked off with the joint UNITE4TB-ERA4TB symposium on 15 May. The full-day meeting brought together both partnerships to strengthen our collaboration and address the status and future of treatments for tuberculosis. In-depth discussions were held on topics covered by both consortia, from biomarkers and model-informed pre-clinical and clinical drug development to datasets and data management.
Community Engagement was a core focus of the symposium with a session on public participation and input along the drug development pipeline, featuring several members of UNITE4TB’s Community Advisory Group (CAG).
“Meaningful engagement is a win-win for all. It moves the narrative beyond affected communities simply being the recipients of care. Better understanding equals better buy-in from the community,” said Blessina Kumar, UNITE4TB CAG member.
The day ended with a panel discussion on the status and future of TB treatments by the Advisory Board Members of both consortia.
The Joint Symposium provided an opportunity for our two projects to come together for the first time to discuss the full TB drug development pipeline. Together, we hope to advance new treatment regimens for TB.
Snapshot of the UNITE4TB-ERA4TB Joint Symposium
UNITE4TB Annual Consortium Meeting
Following the Joint Symposium with ERA4TB, we stayed in Sweden for our Annual Consortium Meeting, also hosted by Uppsala University. Over two days, 16-17 May, updates were provided on the overall status of the project, the achievements made to date, and the plans for the next year.
Day 1 opened with a presentation by Tek-Ang Lim (Scientific Officer at Innovative Health Initiative (IHI)) who spoke on maximizing UNITE4TB’s impact. In addition to updates from all 12 Work Packages, there were break-out sessions, including one on how to ensure equitable access to UNITE4TB innovations with speakers from the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Medicines Agency, TB Alliance, GSK, and the Global Drug Facility.
Day 1 of the Annual Meeting closed with a presentation by keynote speaker, Rada Savic of the University of California, San Francisco, who spoke on intelligence for accelerating and de-risking TB regimen development. A key question posed by Rada was how we treat hard-to-treat patients and derisk this in clinical trials.
“All novel drugs, if safe and tolerable, should have a path to the market. Not all options need to be ultra-short treatment regimens,” she said.
Day 2 of the Annual Meeting was opened once more by Tek-Ang Lim of IHI, who gave a run-down of the IHI Interim Review for UNITE4TB, coming up in 2025. We then heard from our Advisory Boards (Scientific, Ethics, and Community) and our Young Investigators Group with an insightful panel discussion on how best to involve young researchers in the Consortium and create a mutual learning environment.
The final session of our 2024 Annual Meeting was a panel discussion about responding to the emerging threat of bedaquiline resistance, with speakers from TASK, the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Johnson & Johnson, as well as the TB Unit Lead of the WHO Regional Office for Europe, Askar Yedilbayev.
Closing the meeting, Derek Sloan (Radboudumc), our new project lead, who was officially handed the reins by Martin Boeree, thanked everyone for their participation and contributions. He noted how promising it is to see how well the project is progressing:
“The past three days, starting with the symposium with ERA4TB, provided thought-provoking scientific discussions with a true spirit of joint engagement. UNITE4TB is continuing to build its engine. Our challenge in the coming years is to fully construct this engine and keep working in a balanced way that makes full use of the multi-disciplinary skillset of the consortium. Together, we will continue to move forward.”
Snapshot of the 2024 UNITE4TB Consortium Meeting