JUNG FOUNDATION SUPPORTS RESEARCH TO IMPROVE TREATMENT FOR DRUG-RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS – WITH DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
With €300,000, the Jung Foundation is supporting the “endTB-Q” study coordinated by Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This international Phase III project is testing a personalised, shorter, all-oral treatment based on the medicines bedaquiline, clofazimine, delamanid and linezolid (BCDL).
Initial results indicate: The new strategy shows clear advantages from the start of treatment and achieves high cure rates, particularly among patients withlimited TB disease at treatment initiation. Underscoring the global significance of the entire project endTB, Study Director and Principal Investigator Dr. Lorenzo Guglielmetti was named to the “TIME100 Health 2025.”
At a glance:
- Personalised therapy with adjusted duration: depending on the initial situation, the treatment under study lasted 24 or 39 weeks, shorter than many previous approaches.
- Practical in everyday care: all-oral medicines, less pill burden for patients and potentially fewer side effects.
- Strong overall outcome: high success rates and good tolerability; some formal endpoints of the primary analysis were narrowly missed.
- Relevance for care: the results provide strong arguments for shorter, better-tolerated treatment approaches worldwide.
- Timeline: the project runs until the End of 2025; further analyses and translation into guidelines and practice will follow.
In 2023, in response to findings from a study it had initiated on Ernst Jung and his companies during the Nazi era, the Jung Foundation adopted a package of measures to address its own history, assume responsibility, raise awareness and help people in need. This funding puts that package into practice: evidence-based assistance for people in crisis situations.