Poster Presenter

New ways of treating Tuberculosis
Lonji Kalombo, Boitumelo Semete, Laetitia Booysen, Yolandy Lemmer, Lebogang Katata, Bathabile Ramalapa and Hulda Swai
South Africa

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tuberculosis (TB) is killing one person worldwide every 20 seconds. And the highest level of death toll is recorded in the Sub-Saharan Africa. This is attributable to the high incidence of the TB-HIV co-infection. Although, an effective therapy against TB exists, it has not yet been curbed because patients need to take daily handful tablets of anti-tuberculosis drugs for more than 6 months. The new strategy consists of shortening the treatment time while considerably reducing the amount of drugs to be administered.

In order to achieve our target, We have been able to successfully and reproducibly encapsulate the frontline anti-tuberculosis drugs (isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrazinamide and ethambutol) into nanoparticles made of polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) by the double emulsion (water-in-oil-in-water) solvent evaporation technique followed by either spray drying or freeze drying to yield free flowing powder. Nanoparticles with particles size ranging between 200 and 500nm with a very narrow size distribution, and a zeta potential varying between -6 to +15mV, featuring sustained drug release for up to 6 days in mice have been manufactured. Very recently, the group has initiated the making of nanocarriers loaded with anti-TB drugs by means of supercritical anti-solvent technique.