Lorenzo Guglielmetti

Tuberculosis is an especially cruel disease—literally choking the life out of the people it strikes. That fact is particularly so for people who suffer from what’s known as rifampin-resistant TB, a form of the disease that does not respond to the leading medicinal treatment. Enter Dr. Lorenzo Guglielmetti. As co-principal investigator for the public health group endTB, Guglielmetti was lead author of a 2025 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that established three new oral drug regimens that can successfully treat the 410,000 people who develop the rifampin-resistant strain of TB each year, all while shortening treatment time and minimizing side effects. Guglielmetti and his colleagues did their work in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Interactive Research and Development—and they consider it more important now than ever. “The extensive cuts to foreign aid by the U.S. government are estimated to lead to a 30% increase in TB cases and to emergence of further drug resistance,” says Guglielmetti. “This is dangerous for the world and for U.S. people."