Routemaps for Highly Effective Tuberculosis Vaccination

Abstract

There is no highly effective tuberculosis vaccine. Darrah et al. (2020) and Tait et al. (2019) are setting new benchmarks for protection against infection and pulmonary disease by changing the route of vaccine delivery and by using a protein subunit vaccine with a potent adjuvant.

Figure 1.. Recent Pre-clinical and Clinical TB Vaccination Studies That Resulted in Improved Efficacy

Darrah et al. (2020) show in rhesus macaques that intravenous BCG administration is profoundly superior in inducing sterilizing immunity in comparison with standard intradermal vaccination, with six out of ten animals protected. Tait et al. (2019) report 26 out of 1,663 latently infected participants in the placebo group developed TB disease, whereas 13 out of 1,626 in the M72/AS01_E group developed TB disease. Red indicates presence of bacteria and tuberculosis lung disease (humans and macaques), and orange signifies reduced bacterial burdens and disease in macaques, whereas black denotes no clinical active disease in humans and sterilizing immunity in macaques.