This book discusses specific immune cell regulatory pathway(s), immune cell types, or other mechanisms involved in host responses to tuberculosis that can be potentially targeted for host-directed therapy (HDT). The pathways/mechanisms investigated are either protective - thus calling for pathway/factor enhancing drugs - or maladaptive - thus calling for pathway/factor inhibitory drugs. Discovery and development (pre-clinical and clinical) of candidate HDT agents will also be elucidated, as well as approaches for HDT of other diseases. The benefit to the reader will derive from learning about the biology of multiple host pathways involved in health and disease, how these pathways are disrupted or dysregulated during tuberculosis, and which druggable targets exist in these pathways. This book provides the reader with a roadmap of current and future directions of HDT against tuberculosis. Since the host pathways/factors involved in protective or maladaptive responses to tuberculosis are not disease-specific, information learned from the context of tuberculosis likely will be relevant to other infectious and non-infectious diseases.

Petros C. Karakousis, M.D., is an infectious diseases-trained physician scientist and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research focus is on host-pathogen interactions contributing to Mycobacterium tuberculosis persistence and antibiotic tolerance. His laboratory is actively investigating the repurposing of clinically available agents with immune-modulatory properties as adjunctive host-directed therapy, in order to shorten the duration of TB treatment and improve lung pathology. Maria Laura Gennaro, M.D., is Professor of Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies mechanisms of adaptation expressed by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and by the host macrophage during infection, with the goal of finding targets for therapeutic intervention. She has a specific interest in macrophage lipid metabolism, which is altered following M. tuberculosis infection, thereby promoting bacterial survival. Richard Hafner, M.D., is an infectious diseases-trained physician and Chief of the TB Clinical Research Branch in the Division of AIDS at NIAID/NIH. Throughout his career, he has had a long-standing interest in advancing innovative host-directed therapies for infections. He has been involved in several clinical trials, authored various articles, and hosted multiple scientific meetings related to research to develop targeted HDTs for TB.