On Apr. 6, 2022, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced four new grant awards to establish Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centers (TRACs).

The centers will support the development of a next generation of tuberculosis (TB) researchers by providing focused mentoring and funding support for new investigators; opportunities for multidisciplinary and collaborative research; and training in laboratory and clinical settings. The total funding in the first year of these five-year grants is approximately $4.3 million.

TB is a bacterial disease that currently is the second leading cause of death, after COVID-19, from a single infectious agent worldwide. In 2020, as many as 10 million new TB cases were diagnosed and approximately 1.5 million lives were lost to the disease. Alleviating the global burden of TB through research to discover or improve diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines is a top priority for NIAID, as outlined in the 2018 Strategic Plan for Tuberculosis Research