March 5th,2025, the First IATB-MSF Webinar on Tuberculosis Research was successfully organized online. In collaboration with Medecins Sans Frontieres (the organization of doctors without borders, also known as MSF), Innovation Alliance and the Beijing Chest Hospital’s Clinical Center on Tuberculosis organized the first academic exchange on Zoom webinar.

Recently, clinical trials led by MSF scientists as well as its revelations have played an important part in convincing the WHO Global Tuberculosis Program (WHO GTP) to revise its DR-TB treatment guidelines. The online webinar saw Dr. Lorenzo Guglielmetti of the Epicentre Paris introducing the endTB-Q study as well as Dr. Animesh Sinha representing Manson unit at MSF London introducing their attempt to systematically roll out BPaL/BPaLM regimens in two former Soviet countries, Belarus and Uzbekistan through conducting operational research for that purpose. Representing China’s own TB clinical research community were two renowned researchers, Prof. Yuhong Liu of the Innovation Alliance, formerly deputy at the Clinical Center for Tuberculosis, the Beijing Chest Hospital and Dr. Feng Sun of Huashan Hospital, the two of them introduced major TB clinical trials being conducted across China recently by the two major networks, the China Tuberculosis Clinical Trials Consortium (CTCTC) and the National Medical Center for Infectious Diseases (NMCID) at Huashan Hospital. A short Q&A session was ensued with questions relating to pragmatic trials designs being discussed.

The webinar was the first of a series of academic exchanges planned between MSF and IATB covering all aspects of TB research in 2025. Stay tune.