Precision medicine at UCSF informs research across the institution. Faculty from all schools – Dentistry, Nursing, and Pharmacy, in addition to Medicine – are involved in large-scale, data-driven investigations that lead to better understanding of health and more precise therapeutics. In the following example, data analysis from the largest randomized, FDA-approved tuberculosis drug trial ever has led to a new regimen that offers better treatment for millions of patients worldwide.
By Levi Gadye
It’s a disease of the lungs. It spreads through the air. It can kill millions in a year. And it’s the cause of an ongoing pandemic.
The disease isn’t COVID-19. It is tuberculosis (TB). Each year, nearly ten million people are diagnosed with TB and over a million die. Prior to COVID, TB was the deadliest infectious disease on the planet. Yet the gold standard for treatment is a prolonged, daily regimen of multiple antibiotics, taken for a minimum of six months, that hasn’t changed in decades—a regimen that places a huge burden on patients already struggling to make ends meet.
A clinical trial of new treatment regimens, led in part by researchers at UCSF, recently demonstrated that a more potent combination of antibiotics could shorten the duration of treatment for TB, giving patients back two months of their lives and improving their chances of taking every dose. The results from the trial were published on May 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“The existing treatment for TB is six months long, it’s hard, and there are a lot of issues with it,” said UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Rada Savic, PhD, whose work on TB drug pharmacology served as the basis for the trial. “The entire drug development process has focused for 40 years to try to shorten it, many trials have failed, and this is the first success.”
Findings from the trial were so robust that the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed the regimen this summer, enabling health care providers and TB programs around the world to use it.
“This landmark trial was the largest randomized, registration-quality trial of new regimens for pulmonary TB to date,” said Payam Nahid, MD, MPH, who served as the clinical trial protocol co-chair and serves as director of the UCSF Center for Tuberculosis. “Rada’s thorough data analyses gave the team insight into how to optimize the dosages and duration of the regimen, and it worked. It’s a model for others to follow in infectious disease.”
Read the full story on the UCSF School of Pharmacy website
