Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Company has announced the creation of a public-private partnership that will focus on early-phase research on new medicines to treat tuberculosis, including emerging resistant strains.

Based in Seattle, the Lilly Not-For-Profit Partnership for TB Early Phase Drug Discovery will work to integrate medicinal chemistry expertise from the pharmaceutical industry with academic expertise in chemistry, microbiology, and TB, particularly basic biology genetics and molecular biology. The initiative will also emphasize the screening of well-characterized chemical libraries and improved access to medicinal chemistry, both of which have been identified as important missing elements in current TB research. Partners in the effort include Afya World Medicines, the Infectious Disease Research Institute, Jubilant Biosys, Merck and Company, the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, and the University of Washington Department of Global Health.

Lilly has agreed to commit $15 million over five years to the partnership, bringing its financial support to the fight against TB to $135 million. As part of its commitment, the company will fund the leasing of laboratory space and equip it with high-tech machinery and biological tools used for drug screening and testing. In addition, it will open its library of more than 500,000 medicinal compounds to researchers, who will test and screen them for possible TB treatments. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — part of the National Institutes of Health — and the Foundation for the NIH will partner with the organization to facilitate identification and further development of the most promising drug leads for TB.

"We are taking an important step toward the discovery of new and improved treatments for tuberculosis," said Gino Santini, Lilly senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development. "We recognize that new drug research is needed to help save the millions of lives that today are being lost to TB. By merging the resources of the public and private sectors — both scientific and financial — this partnership will serve as a catalyst to advance the early discovery of new medicines for this ancient killer."