Singapore Programme of Research to Investigate New approaches to Treatments for Tuberculosis (“SPRINT-TB”) has commenced in 2014 with a vision to become the leading international academic research programme on delivering new treatments for TB by 2018. Headed by Lead Principal Investigator (PI) Prof. Nicholas Paton (Department of Medicine, National University of Singapore), the programme has been awarded funding by the National Medical Research Council of Singapore (NMRC) under the Translational and Clinical Research (TCR) grant Tier 1 scheme for an initial period of 5 years. In addition to the TCR funding stream, SPRINT-TB also includes a number of existing TB research projects funded by Singapore and international grant bodies that total over S$25 million.

SPRINT-TB brings together several inter-institutional research groups that will work together towards achieving the programme’s vision. A/Prof Thomas Dick’s group (NUS Department of Microbiology) will work on identifying novel drug targets in mycobacteria, while Prof. Alex Matter’s team (Experimental Therapeutics Centre, A*STAR) will focus on drug discovery, pre-clinical development and animal models. Programme’s clinical development theme, led by Prof. Nicholas Paton, will undertake TB drug clinical trials, including TRUNCATE-TB – a large phase 2/3 Asian multicentre trial for novel drug regimens in patients with drug-sensitive TB. Prof. Richard Coker (NUS School of Public Health) will lead treatment delivery research.

SPRINT-TB has also attracted numerous collaborators across NUHS, A*STAR, Asian regional universities and hospitals, as well as academic and industry researchers in Europe and USA. The programme will be overseen by a Programme Steering Committee comprising of PIs and invited independent experts.