Institut Pasteur Korea and NITD Singapore Collaborate on Tuberculosis Drug Discovery

Institut Pasteur Korea (IPK) and Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD), Singapore, have entered into a Services Frame Agreement for the identification of safe and effective new therapies for Tuberculosis infected individuals.

This partnership utilizes IPK’s proprietary PhenomicScreen technological platform with the chemical compound collection of NITD.

IPK Principal Investigators Dr Priscille Brodin and Dr Jonathan Cechetto are responsible for identifying active yet non toxic agents that block bacteria replication and infection.

This phenotypic approach does not rely on a predefined target, but rather simultaneously selects both chemical compounds and an unknown cellular target solely by the clearly discernible effect on the disease model.

The advantage is that the process selects novel targets, and only those, which are functionally significant in the disease process.