Once routinely treated with cheap antibiotics, TB is poised to make a terrifying comeback. More and more, doctors in developing nations are finding patients infected with strains of TB invulnerable to all but a handful of extremely expensive, exotic drugs. Worldwide, TB already infects one in every three people and sickens one in ten. Without new methods to stop the spread of drug-resistant strains, the cost of treating this ancient human pathogen could bankrupt even the most prosperous economies.
…
TB could, in theory, develop resistance to this new class of drugs, too. But Alber thinks he can skew the odds to favor humans. Identifying a drug capable of knocking out several TB enzymes at once could make it next to impossible for the bacterium to evolve resistance on multiple fronts.

Though TB is a daunting foe, Alber remains confident about the prospects of beating the disease. “As a bacterium, it should be easier to treat than HIV or malaria. Those kinds of diseases-caused by viruses and protozoans-we generally don’t know how to cure,” Alber says. “From a scientific perspective, TB is a simpler problem.”