The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance), established in 2000, brings together industry, NGOs, governments and foundations to work together with more than 30 partners around the world to accelerate the discovery and development of cost-effective new medicines. The TB Alliance draws on the best practices and resources of the public and private sectors. Its mission is to accelerate the discovery and development of cost-effective new anti-TB medicines, which should shorten or simplify treatment, provide a more effective treatment of multidrug-resistant TB and improve treatment of latent TB infection.

Company partners include: Bayer HealthCare, Cumbre, GlaxoSmithKline, the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) and Novartis. Other partners include the Beijing Institute of Materia Medica, the Beijing Tuberculosis and Thoracic Tumor Research Institute, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), University of Auckland, University of Illinois, Yonsei University. Funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Irish Aid, the Netherlands´ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UK Department of International Development (DFID).

The partnership functions as a virtual R&D organization. By outsourcing medicine research and development projects, medicine compounds are moved along the development line to achieve regulatory approval and bring them to market at affordable prices for those countries experiencing the highest burden from TB.

The TB Alliance activities in developing countries include clinical trials in Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia and non-clinical or preclinical work in China and India.