Gates Foundation supports OSU tuberculosis research

Like many travelers, Dr. Luiz Bermudez once took mefloquine before a trip to Africa as a preventive treatment against malaria.

Now with a grant of nearly $1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bermudez is looking more carefully at mefloquine to see how it might also be effective against tuberculosis or TB—a disease which kills approximately 1.5 million people every year.

"Tuberculosis is a major health issue. This research could lead to a very quick way to find a new therapy," he said. "If this project is successful, it could substantially improve the care of patients with tuberculosis."

A bacterial disease which usually affects the lungs and can be spread through the air, tuberculosis afflicts approximately one third of the world's population. It can be fatal if left untreated. The majority of TB infections occur in developing countries where patients face challenges completing the required six months of treatment, contributing to the emergence of new, drug-resistant strains.

"There is an urgent need for more fast-acting, effective drugs to treat TB," said Dr. Ken Duncan, Senior Program Officer at the Gates Foundation. "By supporting promising work such as the mefloquine investigation at OSU, we hope to add new weapons against drug-resistant strains and improve our ability to fight TB."

The Gates Foundation grant will provide two years of funding for Bermudez' research team which also includes OSU pharmacy professor Mark Zabriskie as a co-principal investigator.

A microbiology professor and head of biomedical sciences department in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Bermudez has worked in TB research for more than 25 years. His team actually discovered mefloquine's effectiveness against tuberculosis six years ago while conducting a drug screening study.

Despite its potential, mefloquine could not be immediately developed into a TB treatment because it produces side effects in some people. Bermudez and other researchers have since isolated a compound within mefloquine which is less toxic but still effective against TB.

With the Gates funding, Bermudez will work to identify exactly how that compound kills or "targets" the mycobacterium that cause tuberculosis.

"If we find the target or targets, we will be able to design a new class of compounds that will kill the bacteria," said Bermudez.