Developed by chemists at Brown University in conjunction with colleagues at MIT and Cornell, the compound could enable a new drug strategy for treating tuberculosis.

With $1.45 million over five years from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health, a pair of Brown University professors will work with colleagues in Ghana to build the research capacity needed to address the deadly co-epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis.

Researchers from Brown and MIT have shown new details about how a promising new class of antibiotics attacks the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. The research could provide a blueprint for developing drugs aimed at fighting TB.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis may have an Achilles’ heel: It needs a particular enzyme to survive. Inhibiting that enzyme’s function, researchers have shown, will kill the bacteria, pointing toward a design strategy for new TB drugs.