Letter to Cepheid cites continued cost of machines, Russia, China cartridge costs of five to six times negotiated price, and more.

Research led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists has produced new versions of an old antibiotic that are active against difficult-to-treat tuberculosis; offers new strategy for overcoming drug resistance

In view of the present and future requirements of global tuberculosis control, a sustained fight against tuberculosis now needs enhanced investment.

Newly discovered mutations help tuberculosis to stay infectious while evolving resistance to multiple drugs.

January 27, 2014 – Osaka, Japan and Rockville, MD, USA - Japan’s National Institute of Biomedical Innovation(“NIBIO”), Aerasand Create Vaccine Company, Ltd(“CREATE”) announce today that they signed a collaboration agreementon December 26, 2013, on the preclinical and clinical development of new mucosal tuberculosis (TB) vaccines based on NIBIO’s human parainfluenza type-2 (rhPIV2) vector technology.

Members of the World Health Organization Executive Board this week moved forward on the long path to new ways to spur research and development for diseases that mainly afflict poor populations. A process has been set for considering – and potentially choosing among – eight projects in the coming months. But bigger questions of alternative systems were left for further discussion.

UNITAID reports exploring the patent landscapes and possible access issues relating to bedaquiline, SQ109, AZD5847, sutezolid, delamanid and PA-824.

The sometimes tense issue of intellectual property rights flexibilities built into international trade rules on IP briefly threatened to trip up a proposal on access to medicines today at the World Health Organization. But members managed to steer the debate to consensus on a text that will now head to the full membership for approval in May.

Discussions on access to essential medicines yesterday at the World Health Organization were in some ways overshadowed by the recent leak of a global pharmaceutical campaign aimed at derailing efforts by the South African government to revise its intellectual property policy. WHO Director General Margaret Chan strongly supported South Africa, as did several developing countries, while developed countries remained silent on the subject.

The issue of whether it is justifiable to subject people with tuberculosis to involuntary incarceration is a highly controversial one. It pits individual human rights against the interests of public health and raises questions about who should have the power to make such an important legal and ethical question – doctors, health officials or the courts?