b'Tuberculosis: A Third World Disease in a Global CommunityMarcus Diaz, Olivia Moss, Jenu Thomas-Richardson, and Courtney Johnson, Department of ChemistryFaculty Sponsor:Thomas Manning, Department of ChemistryTuberculosis, a bacterial infection, is a historically devastating disease with estimates placing its impacts on humanity at resulting in the one of seven in the history of humanity. The golden age of antibiotics began when Dr. Fleming uncovered the activity of penicillin in the late 1920s. Its efficacy was not realized on large scale when it was mass produced during WWII. The golden era of antibiotics has been jarred for the past three decades because of the emergence of drug resistant bacteria. With Tb, the levels of emergence included drug resistant (DR), multidrug resistance (MDR), extremely drug resistant (XDR and totally drug resistant (TDR) Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We have developed a novel group of complexes that take an existing antibiotic and make it work better and work again when used against latent, active and resistant strains of Tb. The testing of our work was conducted over four years at the National Institute of Health (NIH), the international gold standard of Tb research. From these results, a number of papers were published in the peer reviewed literature (ex. 1, 2) and a U.S. and International patent application filed (3).Our work will focus on a more efficient and economical delivery system for our complexes. It focuses on a biodegradable implant that delivers the new form of antibiotics directly to the pulmonary system. Approximately 90% of all Tb patients have a pulmonary infection. When drugs are taken orally there is an inefficiency of the drug in the GI tract being transported to the diseased area. Tb drugs can have terrible side effects so a significantly lower dose will lower the side effects. We currently have a collaboration with a national drug development lab in India. India has 1.35 billion citizens of which forty percent have Tb. The Prime Minister of India announced within the past year that India will rid itself of Tb by 2025, an incredible task. Given the few drugs that have any efficacy against drug resistant have horrific side effects, including mortality and their cost is higher than the average annual salary of a worker in India, there is a strong opportunity for our system. Our biodegradable implant is economical, rugged and designed to work with our drugs that have been shown to work against MDR-TB. In addition to lab work, we have developed a business plan and are drafting a patent application for our implant.28'