Between 23-28 July, the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Tuberculosis Drug Discovery and Development took place in Castelldefels, Spain. This biannual conference focuses on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research, as well as encouraging discussion among scientists of all career stages.
Director of the Institut Pasteur, Paris and ERA4TB Scientific Lead, Stewart Cole, commented:
“The ERA4TB consortium figured prominently at the GRC and illustrated its importance to the global TB drug development pipeline in a range of areas from discovery and translation to preclinical and clinical trials.”
Not only did Professor Cole open the conference with a presentation in the keynote session on ‘Applying New Technologies and Recent Learnings From TB Drug Discovery and Development, Towards Next Generation Treatments’, but Joel Lelievre from ERA4TB’s pharmaceutical partner GSK, was Vice-Chair for the whole event.
The following days of the conference included presentations from David Barros (GSK, Spain), ERA4TB’s pharmaceutical lead, speaking about “Adaptive Clinical Trials to De-Risk Late Attrition”, and ERA4TB members Laura Cleghorn (Drug Discovery Unit, University of Dundee, United Kingdom) on “Lysyl tRNA Synthetase – A Novel Drug Target for TB”, and Natalya Serbina (TB Alliance, United States) on “Disrupting Protein Homeostasis in Mtb: Novel Modulators of the Clp Protease System”. A number of posters from ERA4TB members were also shown and Neeraj Dhar, formerly involved in ERA4TB’s imaging work package, acknowledged ERA4TB’s support.
