Prospects for better tuberculosis vaccines

Abstract

Tuberculosis remains one of the top three infectious disease killers. Treatment is long and expensive and drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are already on the rise. The current vaccine, BCG, is ineffective in parts of the world where the disease is most widespread and therefore the search for a novel, more effective vaccine is paramount. In this review we discuss the current state of vaccine research, including the identification of candidate antigens and the current methods used for their evaluation.