April 6, 2022: The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, today announced four new grant awards to establish Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centers (TRACs). The centers will support the development of a next generation of tuberculosis (TB) researchers by providing focused mentoring and funding support for new investigators; opportunities for multidisciplinary and collaborative research; and training in laboratory and clinical settings. The total funding in the first year of these five-year grants is approximately $4.3 million.

A class of immune cells called innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) mediates the body’s initial defense against tuberculosis (TB), according to a report published online today in Nature. Boosting this response may provide a new approach to developing treatments and vaccines against TB, which causes more deaths worldwide than any other single infectious disease. The research was supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health.  It was conducted by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in collaboration with scientists at the Africa Health Research Institute in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and other institutions.

NIAID recognizes a need for non-sputum-based tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics for use in HIV-1-infected and HIV-1-exposed uninfected children to improve and simplify rapid and decentralized diagnosis of TB disease. To support biomarker discovery and biomarker-based assay development, NIAID will fund R01 research projects through the new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) Advancing Biomarker Discovery and Novel Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Active TB Disease Detection in HIV-1 Infected and Exposed Children (R01, Clinical Trial Optional).

New research findings provide insight into the immune system pathways that may be key to developing an effective tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

On 22 December 2015 the White House officially released a plan to address multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) domestically and internationally and to advance research on this critical public health issue through a National Action Plan for Combating Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is expanding its Tuberculosis Research Units (TBRU) program in an effort to drive innovation in tuberculosis (TB) research. NIAID is awarding up to $15.2 million in fiscal year 2015 and as much as $105.3 million over seven years to fund four institutions that will act as a collaborative TBRU network.