Abstract
Despite the availability of a vaccine as well as some effective drugs on the market for the treatment of tuberculosis, TB still causes three million deaths annually across the globe with morbidity and mortality. This is mainly due to increase of drug resistance like MDR-TB (multi-drug resistant), XDR-TB (extensively drug resistant), HIV co-infection, and lack of patient compliance with current chemotherapy (due to lengthy treatment). Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify new drugs based on a different mechanism of action. Many research groups around the world are exploring new drug candidates for the effective treatment of tuberculosis. This chapter will provide some glimpses of the current drugs in use including their mechanism of action, side-effects, and mechanism of resistance. Further, it also provides a discussion on desirable features of new drugs, different targets for effective TB treatment and approaches that are being made in the development of potential drugs for resistant tuberculosis, particularly the ones that are in different stages of preclinical and clinical studies.