The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Supporting, Mobilizing, and Accelerating Research for Tuberculosis Elimination (SMART4TB) project. SMART4TB, a five-year initiative, will invest up to $200 million, subject to the availability of funding, to identify more effective methods and tools for finding, treating, and preventing tuberculosis (TB) in USAID’s 24 priority countries for TB programming.
This initiative will build research capacity in high TB burden countries by supporting studies that evaluate novel approaches, interventions, and tools to combat TB–including diagnostic tests, new treatment drugs and regimens, socioeconomic and health system challenges, methods to interrupt TB transmission, and TB vaccines readiness and delivery.
Led by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the SMART4TB international consortium partners are the University of California, San Francisco, KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Treatment Action Group, Perinatal HIV Research Unit (South Africa), YR Gaitonde Medical, Educational and Research Foundation (India), Walimu (Uganda), Kyrgyz State Medical Academy, and Victory Network (Vietnam).
