103268New Drugs for MDR-TBClosedCentresInnovate UKTuberculosis is one of the most serious bacterial infections, infecting 7-8 million people world-wide and causing 1.4 million deaths a year. There is an urgent need for more effective interventions for the disease, including new vaccines, better diagnostics, and improved antibiotics. Standard antibiotic therapy for tuberculosis is lengthy and includes 4 or more drugs. Mutli-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) is a serious problem not only globally but also in the UK. Unless we find new drugs to treat MDR-TB this problem will continue to rise. Drugs are expensive, toxic and the course of treatment takes two years. Globally half the people who are treated for MDR-TB die, so treatment needs to be improved. We have ideal facilities at Public Health England Porton and extensive expertise in TB drug research. We have an existing pipeline of preclinical tools, which are unique to us. We aim to further improve upon this suite of tools by maximising our fluorescence method by using a higher throughput screener; this will have an impact on finding new drugs for MDR-TB by more rapid and appropriate screening of novel compounds to target MDR-TB.