New Tuberculosis Antibiotic Shows Promise for Shortening Treatment

A team of investigators announced promising data for a novel antibiotic meant to shorten and simply treatment for tuberculosis patients. CIDRAP has the news.

Data from the phase 2 trial show that “sorfequiline (TBAJ-876) had greater activity against drug-susceptible TB than existing treatments at 8 weeks, with a favorable safety profile. The trial was the first test of sorfequiline, a second-generation diarylquinoline antibiotic, in people.” The results provided enough evidence to move forward with a phase 3 trial.

There is reason to believe that sorfequiline “has the potential to shorten treatment durations for both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant forms of the disease, which sickened an estimated 10.7 million people in 2024.”

The randomized controlled trial, which included 309 participants, involved five randomly assigned treatment arms, including three with different doses of sorfequiline. At week 8 of the trial, the “proportion of patients with sputum conversion was 59% in those who received SPaL with 100 mg of sorfequiline, compared with 45% in the HRZE arm [the standard first-line regimen] and 45% in the BPaL arm [BPaL represents a significant improvement over the previous regimens for drug-resistant TB].” The results also showed that the “safety profile of SPaL was comparable to HRZE. And participants in the SPaL arms responded well to the regimen, which involves only three daily pills.”

There is hope that “SPaL could eventually be a universal treatment given initially to all patients when they test positive for TB, rather than waiting for tests to determine whether they have drug-susceptible or drug-resistant TB and then get started on an appropriate therapy.”