Dr. Omar Vandal, Ph.D. ’07, came to Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences determined to make a difference in the world—focusing his studies on tuberculosis, the world’s most deadly infectious disease and one that sickens an estimated half-million people each year in his homeland of Pakistan. He did innovative doctoral research, identifying a key protein that the TB bacterium needs to survive within the host cell—information that may help scientists develop better drugs. But...
New Antimicrobial Resistance Mechanism Uncovered in Hunt for TB New Drug
February 6, 2019
An investigation by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists has yielded two breakthroughs in the pursuit of combating growing resistance to tuberculosis treatments. First, the team discovered a new strategy that tuberculosis-causing bacteria use to evade treatment. They also identified an experimental compound that might help circumvent drug resistance to the most widely used tuberculosis drug, isoniazid.
Tuberculosis is the top infectious disease killer worldwide and growing resistance to...
Weakening Tuberculosis Bacteria’s Defenses May Speed Treatment and Thwart Drug Resistance
August 13, 2018
By sabotaging one of the tuberculosis bacterium’s defenses against antibiotics, Weill Cornell Medicine investigators may have found a way to accelerate treatment for the disease and possibly overcome growing resistance to existing therapies.
In a study published April 25 in Science Translational Medicine, Dr. Dirk Schnappinger and colleagues found a way to...
