Over two days, 16-17 May, updates were provided on the overall status of UNITE4TB, 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, 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 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, followed by updates from the Scientific, Ethics, and Community Advisory Boards 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), UNITE4TBs new project lead, 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.”