5^th March, 2024, Xiamen

2-3^rd March, the fourth TB R&D cooperation international forum was successfully held in Xiamen, Fujian province. This forum has been a collaboration between the Innovation Alliance (IATB) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) with the latter providing technical assistance and philanthropic donations. The past three forums addressed issues of pre-clinical candidates of promising new drugs and vaccines, clinical studies of novel anti-TB drugs and regimens, target product profiles (TPPs) for novel TB IVDs as well as their R&D. This year, the forum kept its lens on the non-sputum sampling strategies and CAD technologies while touching on key development of novel drug and regimen clinical trials. In parallel, a seminar on oversea public health market development was also organized for the first time.

This forum saw 24 speakers from in and out of China presenting, most of whom are researchers and developers from the industry introducing their IVD and CAD products. Notably we have invited two influential speakers representing the WHO, Dr. Dennis Falzon and Dr. Samuel Schumacher, speaking about its latest TPPs on next gen anti-TB chemo-regimens as well as treatment response monitoring tests. As a fixture, we invited Dr. Morten Ruhwald of FIND to introduce the frontier of global TB IVD R&D as well as its trend. For the seminar, we invited Dr. Yi Tang of WHO China office to talk about the pre-qualification process and its significance. Mrs. Claire Watkins of CHAI has been invited to give a talk on the global landscape of TB product public health market. As a special guest, Mr. Geert Florent representing the Delft Imaging group spoke about their pioneering experiences in utilizing CAD4TB with ultraportable radiology equipment in active TB case finding as well as their view on the future application of CAD4TB in TB case detection. We also invited speakers representing key global stakeholders such MSF, the Global Health Labs and Stop TB partnership to present their respective focuses, such as the endTB study, application potential of non-sputum tongue swab samples in TB testing and CAD as well as portable radiology equipment for active TB case finding in under-resourced high-burden settings. 

The forum reached an attendance of over 2000, and it has been an instant success with great feedbacks received from speakers, audience and our industrial partners. The BMGF spoke highly of the forum and pledged to support future collaborations in a different capacity.

Report by Zi Chen, Innovation Alliance

Photo by Lin Cong, Beijing Chest Hospital