Takeda and TB Alliance announce new research collaboration

Takeda has announced a new collaboration with the TB Alliance that aims to further the development of new therapies for tuberculosis.

The agreement focuses on work to further explore hits generated from a high-throughput screening program conducted to find novel compounds to improve treatment of the deadly respiratory condition.

Financed through the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund, this programme was initiated in June 2013 to screen Takeda's library of 20,000 proprietary compounds, in order to identify potential candidates with promise to be further developed into tuberculosis treatments.

This new project complements the TB Alliance's existing work in advancing the pipeline for new drugs, while leveraging Takeda's drug discovery expertise for communicable diseases.

A statement from Takeda said: "Through these initiatives, TB Alliance and Takeda aim to contribute to the eradication of tuberculosis and improve the health and quality of life for millions of people."

This comes after the company commenced the world's first norovirus vaccine field trial earlier this week to assess the performance of its new vaccine candidate TAK-214.