According the World Health Organization, tuberculosis (TB) caused 1.6 million deaths in 2005. One third of the world's population is chronically infected with TB. The goals of the TBDB project are to provide data, analysis tools, and access to scientific discoveries that will help us understand tuberculosis and develop tools to treat and prevent it. This site also serves as a community forum for the tuberculosis research community. TB is a public health challenge of paramount importance. Control of TB will require a multifaceted approach integrating efficient public health interventions with the discovery and use of new vaccines and drugs.

TBDatabase is a multi-institutional collaboration makes available the tools and resources available at the Stanford Microarray Database and the Broad Institute. In addition, TBDB takes advantage of data produced by Tuberculist, BioHealthBase, and BioCyc.