Antimicrobial pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) science and clinical trial simulations have not been adequately applied to the design of doses and dose schedules of antituberculosis regimens because many researchers are skeptical about their clinical applicability. We compared findings of preclinical PK/PD studies of current first-line antituberculosis drugs to findings from several clinical publications that included microbiologic outcome and pharmacokinetic data or had a dose-scheduling design. Without exception, the antimicrobial PK/PD parameters linked to optimal effect were similar in preclinical models and in tuberculosis patients. Thus, exposure-effect relationships derived in the preclinical models can be used in the design of optimal antituberculosis doses, by incorporating population pharmacokinetics of the drugs and MIC distributions in Monte Carlo simulations. When this has been performed, doses and dose schedules of rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, and moxifloxacin with the potential to shorten antituberculosis therapy have been identified. In addition, different susceptibility breakpoints than those in current use have been identified. These steps outline a more rational approach than that of current methods for designing regimens and predicting outcome so that both new and older antituberculosis agents can shorten therapy duration.Advances in the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) have suffered from a lack of scientific imagination. A century ago, TB research was the true cutting edge of medical innovation (65,90,97). Unfortunately, while scientific knowledge for the therapy of most diseases virtually exploded, we and others in the TB world still use dated paradigms and language. In the meantime, the pandemic shows no signs of subsiding. In 2008, there were 8.9 to 9.9 million incident cases of TB; prevalence was 9.6 to 13.3 million cases, and 1.8 million people died from TB (107). "Short-course chemotherapy" is actually long. Longterm mortality, morbidity, relapse, and resistance emergence are still problems even after "successful" therapy (20,77,78,93). Indeed, while it often said that the therapy has a 95% success rate under directly observed therapy (DOTS) programs, a look at high-TB-burden countries with good DOTS programs reveals cure rates for pulmonary TB of only 34 to 76%, and those are under study conditions (1, 103). Recently, the efficacy of DOTS itself has been challenged (14, 103). Clearly, the traditional approaches have not succeeded in eradicating TB. It is time to take a different road.