News 2025

Monitoring treatment response in TB patients has been problematic to date. Sputum microscopy is not accurate, and sputum cultures require six (liquid culture) to eight weeks (solid culture) to provide a reliable indication of treatment response. During this time, patients with still-living mycobacteria are considered potentially infectious. For clinical trials, methods that predict the time of culture conversion faster than cultures would be desirable in order to efficiently compare the efficacy of new drugs.

The research team conducted a prospective identification and independent validation cohort of patients suffering from infectious pulmonary tuberculosis. For this purpose, data from tuberculosis patients collected as part of studies conducted by the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) since 2013 were analyzed. Weekly sputum samples were examined and the exact time until culture conversion was determined. By analyzing 45,000 RNA molecules in human blood and using biomathematical methods, the team identified 27 RNA molecules that can be used to precisely predict the time of culture conversion. TB27 can therefore precisely calculate when the culture will become negative just one week after the start of therapy - for example, after a further two weeks. The prediction accuracy is statistically highly significant with an r² value of 0.98. “TB27 could make an important contribution to how we evaluate the success of tuberculosis therapies. This biomarker not only enables faster and non-invasive monitoring of treatment response, but could also contribute to the efficient evaluation of new drugs in clinical trials.” Says Dr. Maja Reimann.

Publication:

Reimann M, Avsar K, DiNardo AR , Goldmann T, Günther G, Hoelscher M, Ibraim E, Kalsdorf B, Kaufmann SHE, Köhler N, Mandalakas AM, Maurer FP, Müller M, Nitschkowski D, Olaru ID, Popa C, Rachow A, Rolling T, Salzer HJF, Sanchez-Carballo P, Schuhmann M, Schaub D, Spinu V, Terhalle E, Unnewehr M, Zielinski NJ, Heyckendorf J, Lange C. TB27 – A Transcriptomic Model to Predict Mycobacterium tuberculosis Culture Conversion. Pathogens and Immunity.2024;10(1):120–139. doi: 10.20411/pai.v10i1.770

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