TAG’s 2024 Pipeline Report: TB Diagnostics

14 February 2025

Treatment Action Group (TAG) launches the 2024 Tuberculosis Diagnostics Pipeline Report.

Treatment Action Group (TAG) released the latest edition of its 2024 Pipeline Report series on TB Diagnostics, written by TB Project Associate, Tejaswini Dharmapuri Vachaspathi. Diagnosis remains the weakest link in the TB cascade of care — of the estimated 10.84 million people who acquire TB each year, only around 8.16 million are diagnosed and started on treatment. Closing that 2.7 million gap to find, treat, and cure more people living with TB will demand shifting our approach to screening and diagnosis toward easy, accessible point-of-care testing. This year’s Pipeline Report takes a critical look at TB tests in development and the systems they will be introduced into.

Most WHO-recommended diagnostics (WRDs) are inconveniently placed far away from where people first seek care, are less sensitive in certain vulnerable populations, and use sample types that are hard to obtain. But new tools in the pipeline aim to address these challenges: tests in development relying on sample types like oral swabs and urine are easier to use at the point-of-care, as are new molecular diagnostic platforms, which are capable of detecting complicated resistance patterns at more decentralized levels of the health system. Tools in development such as AI-based cough apps might help decentralize TB diagnosis even further in the future by enabling self-testing at home, as is already possible for both HIV and HCV.

Making the most of these emerging technologies will require product sponsors to prioritize accessibility and affordability and global health actors to foster competition, facilitate policy translation and introduction, and attach access conditions to public resources.

The 2024 Tuberculosis Diagnostics Pipeline Report is available here. It is part of a series of Pipeline Reports covering TB Vaccines (forthcoming), and TB Treatment (forthcoming), as well as reports on HIV and HCV.

Source: Treatment Action Group