AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2008

Tuberculosis (TB)

TB remains a worldwide threat and is newly diagnosed in over eight million people worldwide every year. It is one of the greatest causes of death from infectious disease in the developing world.

OUR FOCUS

As part of our commitment to making a contribution to improving health in the developing world, we are working to find a new, improved treatment for TB. We have a dedicated research facility in Bangalore, India that is focused on finding a treatment for TB that will act on drug-resistant strains, simplify the treatment regime (current regimes are complex and lengthy, meaning many patients give up before the infection is fully treated) and be compatible with HIV/AIDS therapies (TB and HIV/AIDS form a lethal combination, each speeding the other’s progress). Over 80 scientists in Bangalore work closely with our infection research centre in Boston, US as well as with academic leaders in the field, and they have full access to all AstraZeneca’s platform technologies, such as high throughput screening and compound libraries. It is a complex area of research, but we hope to have identified a candidate drug for testing in man within the next two to three years.

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