PRE2023-Harnessing pathogen genomic data to identify novel determinants to predict treatment succes or failure in tuberculosis (TB-SUCCESS)-PID2022-137607OB-I00

Tuberculosis is the major cause of morbidity (10.6 million cases/year) and mortality (1.6 million person/year) among infectious diseases, likely overtaken COVID-19 in the coming years (as was the case until 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic global TB control had major setbacks, with an increase of deaths for the first time in twenty years and as many as 20% of global cases not diagnosed suggesting that years to come will be worst. The present proposal is aimed to identify novel pathogen markers of treatment failure in tuberculosis. Pathogen markers have been historically overlooked but recent data from our laboratory and others suggests they can be important to understand the nature of treatment failure and to prevent it. If successful this has the potential to advance towards personalized treatments (instead of universal long treatments) for millions of cases a year all over the world averting current economic burden for countries and individual health impact.