Short-course treatment regimen to identify potential antituberculous agents in a murine model of tuberculosis.

Objective: Designing a more rapid method to test antimycobacterial agents in a murine model would significantly improve the drug development process. We describe a short-course in vivo treatment model that could be used to screen potential antituberculous drugs.

Methods: In this model, C57BL/6 mice were infected intranasally with approximately 10(6) viable Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms.