Persistent gaps in access, updates, and implementation of Tuberculosis innovations indicate that technological solutions and awareness campaigns alone are unable to address the complex, interconnected challenges of Tuberculosis diagnosis and care. To address these gaps, the TB-BIOATLAS project aims to understand the role of social, regulatory, and market factors in biomarker research in order to build a transdisciplinary understanding of how tuberculosis (TB) biomarkers can move more effectively from research to real-world use.
Addressing Tuberculosis Through Inclusive Innovations
Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health challenge that requires universal access to timely diagnosis and treatment. Inadequate diagnostic tests coupled with diagnostic delays hinder early initiation of diagnosis and treatment. While scientific progress has led to several promising biomarkers and novel diagnostic tools, their translation into policy and clinical practice has been slow and uneven.
Traditional approaches that focus on technological development or tuberculosis biomarker development have shown limited success because they often overlook the interactions between scientific, regulatory, social, and market systems. For instance, promising biomarkers may face delays due to misaligned regulatory standards, lack of investment incentives, limited health system readiness, or low user trust.
Understanding and addressing these interdependencies requires a transdisciplinary approach, that bridges biomedical research, policy analysis, social science, and community engagement to create solutions that are scientifically sound, contextually relevant, and socially acceptable.
This project aims to map and prioritize existing TB biomarkers, validate the findings, and critically assess the scientific, regulatory, social, and market barriers and enablers shaping biomarker development, translation, and implementation into health systems.
Informing Evidence-Based Guidelines
The study aims to inform World Health Organisation TB guideline development by providing a landscape review of the biomarker field, including qualitative evidence on the feasibility and acceptability of diagnostic tools across diverse stakeholders (including people receiving and providing care, affected communities, managers, community workers, laboratory personnel and program officers).
The objectives of the TB-BIOATLAS project are:
- Compile an overview of the range of Tuberculosis biomarkers in development
- Define test use cases across tuberculosis disease states and prioritise existing biomarkers for each use case
- Critically analyse the barriers and enablers of TB biomarker development
Athena’s Approach - Integrating Experiential Knowledge
As an expert in transdisciplinary research methodology, Athena will support the integration of experiential knowledge. The Advancing TB biomarkers requires understanding not only scientific and technical barriers but also the social, regulatory, and market ecosystems that shape their translation into policy and practice. The approach will critically analyse the enablers and constraints affecting biomarker development, validation, and implementation.
Lessons and outcomes
Specific outputs will include a peer-reviewed publication post completion of the project, a detailed report on the barriers and enablers, a presentation on the scoping review of barriers and enablers to the funders, and an implementation roadmap summarizing evidence-based recommendations for accelerating responsible TB biomarker development and uptake for researcher, academicians, public and private stakeholders, TB program and policy officials.