NIAID awards $5 million grant for study of anti-cancer drug as a new TB treatment

A team of international researchers were recently awarded a three year, $5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to test a cancer drug called imatinib as a repurposed tuberculosis (TB) treatment.

Commercially sold under the name Gleevec, imatinib is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors and is cited by Emory University as one of the first examples of “targeted therapy” aimed at specific genetic changes in cancer cells that drive growth.

NIAID’s grant will specifically build off the work of Daniel Kalman, a team of his colleagues at Emory University, and researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which demonstrated that the drug can disrupt the machinery TB bacteria exploits when infecting human cells.

“There is an urgent need for new drugs to treat TB,” Kalman said. “We are fast approaching the day when all available antibiotics will prove useless. This study is proof-of concept for imatinib in antibiotic-sensitive TB. But if successful, our eventual goal is to use imatinib against antibiotic resistant TB.”

For the study, the researchers will aim to examine the safety and immune system effects of low dose imatinib in healthy human volunteers in the United States. From there, the study will move to South Africa where the treatment will be tested in combination with standard antibiotic regimens in patients with TB.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis that primarily affects the lungs. Symptoms most commonly associated with TB infection include chronic cough, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. According to the Lancet, the disease causes approximately 1.1 million death per year worldwide.