The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency has granted "orphan drug" status to SQ109, an antimicrobial agent against drug-resistant tuberculosis jointly developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and biotech company Sequella, Inc. This orphan designation will help accelerate clinical testing of SQ109, which promises simple and more effective treatment regimen than current methods which require six to nine months of treatment.

SQ109 was discovered by NIAID scientists in 1999 and developed with grant and contract support from NIAID and contributions by the National Cancer Institute/NIAID Inter-Institute Program for the Development of AIDS-related Therapeutics. NIAID licensed the SQ109 technology to Sequella in March 2006 under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement.

Source: NIAID
Photo: An anteroposterior X-ray of a patient diagnosed with advanced bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis. This AP X-ray of the chest reveals the presence of bilateral pulmonary infiltrate (white triangles), and "caving formation" (black arrows) present in the right apical region.The diagnosis is far-advanced tuberculosis. Source: Wikipedia