In 2015, an estimated 10.4 million people were infected with and 1.8 million
people were killed by tuberculosis (TB). Multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively
drug resistant (XRD) TB were other reported complications in the treatment of TB.
Almost 3.3% of new TB cases and 20% of previously treated cases have multi-drug
resistance (MDR) TB while 9.7% of people with MDR-TB have XDR-TB. Recently,
two chemical entities, namely bedaquiline and delamanid were granted conditional
approval for the treatment of MDR-TB, and are recommended only to those patients
for whom other treatments fail to cure. The diagnostic platform, including GeneXpert
Omni® and Xpert Ultra® is in development. There are seven new compounds and eight
approved or repurposed antitubercular drugs in advanced phases of clinical trials, while
thirteen vaccine candidates are in clinical trials. New diagnostics, anti-tubercular drugs
and tubercular vaccines will be needed to achieve the targets set in the End TB
strategy. This chapter explores the medicinal chemistry of anti-tubercular agents in
various phases of clinical trials. The present chapter also deals with various diagnostic
technologies for early detection of tuberculosis, as well as the tubercular vaccines in
various phases of clinical trials.
Keywords: Anti-tubercular agents, Delamanid, Diagnostics, TMC207,
Tubercular, Tuberculosis vaccines.
