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Organization Contact Information | |
| Name: | The Mueller Health Foundation |
| Street 1: | 120 Riverside Boulevard |
| Street 2: | |
| City: | New York |
| Province: | NY |
| Post Code: | 10069 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Phone: | 5083331184 |
| Organization Email: | info@muellerhealthfoundation.org |
| Web Site: | http://www.muellerhealthfoundation.org |
| Other Online Presence: | Twitter: @MuellerHealth Instagram: @muellerhealthfoundation |
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General Information | |
| Board Constituency: | None |
| Is your organization legally registered in your country: | Yes |
| If yes, please enter your registration number: | 47-2554059 |
| Organization Type - Primary: | Foundation |
| Organization Type - Secondary: | Private Foundation |
| Organization Description: | |
| The Mueller Health Foundation is a family-led, philanthropic organization installed in February 2015 that prides itself on supporting innovative, accessible and affordable solutions to generate transformational treatment modalities and ultimately cures for lethal infectious diseases across the globe. Our mission is as follows: We support research, data collection and analysis, as well as education for the identification, development and implementation of accessible, affordable and effective treatment modalities of lethal infectious diseases around the globe. We have made it our life goal to strive to advance cures and means of prevention. Since inception of The Mueller Health Foundation, our main focus has been primarily on the management of multidrug resistance (MDR), extensively drug resistant (XDR) and pro-grammatically incurable forms of tuberculosis (totally drug resistant tuberculosis), which pose enormous challenges similar to those in the “pre-Antibiotics” era. We believe that tuberculosis has been and still is an often overlooked and underfunded diseases and have made it our goal to fund and support efforts toward the eradication of this treatable disease. Through our initiatives we hope to tackle challenges by: -Supporting research for finding new cures; -Improving and expediting limited and often toxic treatment options that can last up to 2 years; -Making treatment options affordable; -Decreasing high morbidity and mortality rates; -Supporting alternative methods to prevent disease transmission as well as palliative and patient-orientated care aspects; and -Addressing medicolegal and ethical issues. The Mueller Health Foundation focuses on four core function to address TB that span across our three strategic pillars: -Funding bold and innovative research to find new treatment solutions for TB in its latent state as well as for multi-drug resistant strains of TB (MDR-TB). -Developing new strategies and educational programs geared toward TB prevention, care and |
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| Do you know about the UNHLM declaration: | Yes |
Specializations / Areas of Work | |
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Advocacy Civil Society and Community Engagement Delivery of health services and care Funding, including innovative and optimized approach to funding TB Care Research and Development |
Other Organization Information | |
| Total number of staff in your organization: | 1 - 5 |
| Number of full-time staff who are directly involved with TB: | 1 - 5 |
| Number of part-time staff who are directly involved with TB: | 0 |
| Number of volunteers who are directly involved with TB: | 0 |
| How did you hear about the Stop TB Partnership: | Attendance at a TB related event |
| If you were informed or referred by another partner of the Stop TB Partnership please tell us who: | N/A |
| Why do you wish join the Stop TB Partnership: | Involvement in Stop TB Working Groups |
| Are you a member of a Stop TB national partnership: | No |
| Are you in contact with your national TB programme: | Yes |
| Please tell us how your organization is contributing to your country's national TB control plan: | |
| The Mueller Health Foundation supports projects focused on TB across a variety of levels. In the US, we collaborate with State Health Departments and also support work done by the National TB Controllers Association to promote education and awareness for TB in the US. We are also supporting work in India through our grantee REACH (Resource Group for Education and Advocacy for Community Health), who works with a range of partners including the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP), private and public hospitals, and community-based providers. The current grant we have given to REACH is focused on creating a new model for community care for DRTB patients to help identify, treat, and support DRTB patients through a set of 10 interventions that range from increasing LTBI testing to providing education for patients, caretakers, family members to travel, nutritional, and mental health support for DRTB patients and their families. The new community care model was created by REACH through interviews and close collaboration with the RNTCP and other key stakeholders and is currently being piloted in the Chennai area in India. |
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Geographical Reach | |
| Which country is your headquarters located in: | United States of America |
| Which countries do you do operate in: (This includes countries you are conducting activities in) |
India Malawi United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United States of America |
Contribution | |
| Please tell us how your organization will contribute to the Global Plan to Stop TB by briefly describing its involvement in any of the areas of work listed below: | |
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TB Care Delivery: Project Name: Building and Operationalizing a Community Care Model for People with Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in India The Mueller Health Foundation’s collaboration with the Resource Group for Education and Advocacy for Community Health (REACH) based in India will focus on a 2-year pilot project aimed at building and operationalizing a community care model for people with drug-resistant tuberculosis in Tamilnadu, India. The project started in June 2022 and is currently on-going. India currently has the highest number of people with tuberculosis (TB) and drug-resistant tuberculosis (DRTB) in the world, comprising almost a quarter of the total burden. According to the India TB Report 2022, 48,232 people were diagnosed with multi-drug resistant/rifampicin resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RRTB) in 2021, which is 4.11% of those tested for rifampicin resistance. Treatment success rates remain suboptimal, at 48% and 60% respectively for people with DRTB initiated on shorter regimens and conventional regimens. Treatment for drug- resistant TB has traditionally been hospital or facility-based management and ambulatory care. However, facility-based interventions have their limitations including lengthy and costly travel. In this context, community-based care emerges as a viable alternative. REACH’s experience in working with TB survivors over the last six years has shown the need for and the impact of involving affected communities in designing public health interventions. The active participation of those most affected by the disease – people with TB, TB survivors and their families – provides an opportunity to tailor services to particular needs, rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. The collaboration between REACH and the Mueller Health Foundation (MHF) therefore aims to design and operationalize a community care model for drug-resistant TB to provide comprehensive, holistic, services for those affected by DRTB in two selected districts of Tamilnadu in India. The goal of this project is to reduce morbidity and mortality due to drug-resistant TB through decentralized care at the community level. The project will include a rapid assessment and landscape mapping of DRTB care models in India, the design and implementation of a community care model for people with drug-resistant TB, which includes a set of 10 interventions such a mental health support, nutritional and travel support, and patient and caretaker education, and lastly, the project will use MHF's blockchain application called TBConnect to facilitate improved information sharing among key stakeholders. Drug-Resistant TB: Drug-Resistant TB is a crucial component in numerous of the grants that the Mueller Health Foundation supports. As described in the TB Care Delivery section, the project focused on creating Community Care Model will be focused on people with drug-resistant TB in India. Details have been provided in the TB Care Delivery Section. Furthermore, the project focused on creating a new pipeline for novel anti-TB drug regimens at Cornell University also includes particular focus on novel approaches for DR-TB regimens. Additional detail for this project is outlined in the New TB Drugs section. Laboratory Strengthening: The Mueller Health Foundation (MHF) is partnering with InveniAI, a highly successful AI technology company based in Guilford, Connecticut in the United States to create a new high-value AI-driven machine learning platform called TBMeld® to identify and accelerate transformative therapies and vaccines for the management, treatment, and cure of tuberculosis (TB). Additionally, the new platform will incorporate predictive modeling functionalities to estimate the effectiveness of TB drug compounds and compound combinations as well as the effectiveness of new TB vaccines. The overarching goal of the collaboration is to pioneer the use of precision medicine to be able to provide tailored, highly effective, and shorter treatment options for TB patients affected by both resistant and non-resistant strains of TB. The platform will be made available for free to support scientist in their research. The collaboration has been on-going since 2019. Additionally, the Mueller Health Foundation has contributed to strengthening laboratory capacity by supporting the purchase of new equipment. In March 2021, MHF provided funds to purchase a new Cellometer K2 cell counter for the Precision Vaccine Program at Boston Children's Hospital. The cellometer K2 is a cell counter that is used for counting immune cells isolated from human blood samples and from mouse tissues. Cell counting is critical to ensure protocols are standardized across experiments and hence is highly relevant for adjuvant and vaccine research. New TB Drugs: Project Name: A rational pipeline for development of novel anti-TB drug regimens at Cornell University The global community is becoming increasingly aware that the treatment even for drug susceptible tuberculosis is prolonged (8-9 months), and frequently ends in failure and the generation of drug-resistant strains. Treatment regimens require a cocktail of 3-4 antibiotics because the bacterial population in vivo is heterogeneous and exhibits differential antibiotic susceptibility that alters with disease state. While scientists and researchers are slowly developing new TB drugs, there is a lack of a rational pipeline to test and optimize drug/drug combinations, which includes emergent host-directed therapeutics. In this new project, supported by the Mueller Health Foundation, the Russell Lab at Cornell University in the United States proposes building on their platform of single cell profiling of active Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection in vivo to assess the relative susceptibility of Mtb subpopulations to the actions of current and emerging anti-tuberculosis drugs. The goal is to generate a “road map” that connects drug susceptible and drug tolerant bacterial populations and facilitates the rational design of combinatorial anti-tuberculosis drug regimens to provide more effective coverage of the total bacterial population. This could increase efficacy and shorten the course of treatment. The project was started in September 2021 and is currently on-going with renewal of the grant in 2025. New TB Vaccines: Given the heavy burden of global TB and the newfound promise in translational vaccinology, the Precision Vaccines Program (PVP) at Boston Children’s Hospital in the United States, directed by Dr. Ofer Levy, has engaged in a partnership with The Mueller Health Foundation to reduce the burden of tuberculosis (TB) via immunization. The project started in 2020 and has since concluded. The Mueller Health Foundation partnered with the PVP on three inter-related projects: 1) Establish a working group to advance and implement an optimal Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine; 2) discovery of a novel adjuvanted tuberculosis vaccine and 3) create educational videos to communicate and raise awareness of the importance of TB vaccines and treatment options. Fundamental Research: The Mueller Health Foundation has engaged the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Malawi to better understand the relationship between TB and diabetes, an increasingly prevalent co-morbidity. The project consists of conducting a pilot experiment on alveolar macrophages from healthy and diabetic donors. The project was started in September 2022 and is currently on-going. The scientist in Malawi will perform bronchoalveolar lavage to recover airway macrophages from healthy and diabetic donors. The cells will be established in culture, and half will be challenged with Mycobacterium tuberculosis in culture. After 24 hours both the infected and uninfected cells will be harvested and fixed in methanol. Cells will be shipped to Cornell for processing for analysis by single cell RNA-seq. Research: The Mueller Health Foundation partnered with Boston Children's Hospital in the United States from 2015 to 2020 to identify new compound leads for anti-TB drugs. Uniting top scientists across multiple continents, Gil Alterovitz, PhD, FACMI, a Harvard Assistant Professor at Boston Children’s Hospital Computational Health Informatics Program, has lead an international effort to identify compound leads for new anti-TB drugs. Using a combination of predictive computer modeling and compound screening through a novel platform, the lab is striving to usher in a new class of treatments based on lesser known principles in protein interactions. Significant research progress has been achieved towards overcoming M. tuberculosis drug resistance, especially concerning the first-line drugs isoniazid (INH) and ethambutol (EMB). Some findings from the project are summarized below: Towards INH resistance: - A promising small molecule was selected through the new model and showed anti-TB drug lead activity in silico and in vitro. - This molecule was shown to potentially compete with INH in synergistic efficacy assay tests with common TB drugs. - Molecular docking showed the small molecule is expected to overcome a prominent mutation corresponding to INH resistance. Towards EMB resistance: - In silico prediction of specific intrinsically disordered binding site in target protein led to a novel inhibitory peptide discovery to potentially overcome EMB resistance. - Computational mimicking of this binding site led to screening of additional inhibiting chemicals through machine learning. - Additional deep learning improved the lead. Other novel drug discovery research: - Compounds isolated from traditional Chinese medicine were screened, gleaning another promising candidate for further study. - Analogs showed great anti-TB effects in vitro. - Derivatives were screened and studied in vitro for synergy with other drugs. |
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Declaration | |
| Declaration of interests: No conflicts of interest were delacred. | |
| Application date: | May 15, 2023 |
| Last updated: | August 28, 2023 |