Our Mission

Globally, tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death from a single infectious disease agent. In 2021 an estimated 1.5 million people died of TB which has meant a significant rise in mortality compared to previous years.

Together with our international partners, the TB research team at the University of St Andrews is fighting the global pandemic of TB by testing and implementing innovative treatments and developing novel diagnostic and treatment monitoring tools. Our sustained research over the last 11 years (on the disease and pathogen responsible) has developed global capacity to improve TB treatment and understanding of the disease.

Tuberculosis diagnosis is an important target of our research as the current tools are slow takins as much as three months to be able to tell a patients whether they have TB or not or how their ongoing disease is progressing. We have developed new tuberculosis diagnostic tests that makes the diagnosis real-time and can also quantify the number of live bacteria so that treatment can be started quickly and the response to it measured rapidly.

We are also proud partners of many global organisations and consortia such as PanACEA, TB Alliance and UNITE4TB sharing the vision of a TB free world. The immense experience of our academic scientific team in clinical trials have been contributing to the realisation of our goals.