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摘要

Tuberculosis (TB) is the single leading cause of death from bacterial infection. It is rapidly becoming untreatable, and untreated TB has a fatality rate of about 70% after three years. The challenges in developing new drugs for TB are scientific, logistical, fiscal and societal. Over the past decade many pharmaceutical firms have abandoned antibiotic research, having failed to discover effective candidates with new mechanisms of action. A further disincentive is the lower return on investment that rapidly curative drugs offer compared with palliative medications for prevalent conditions. The financial picture is particularly bleak for TB, which chiefly afflicts people in low- and middle-income countries. The prospect of even scantier profits makes it all the harder to entice drug companies to work on TB rather than infections that are common in wealthy markets.