TB vaccine candidate shows early promise

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University reported that they have developed a tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate that has proved both potent and safe in animal studies. According to the World Health Organization, TB kills an estimated 1.7 million people each year and infects one out of three people around the globe. With drug-resistant strains spreading, a vaccine for preventing TB is urgently needed. William R. Jacobs, Jr., Ph.D.”Producing effective TB vaccines requires a better understanding of the mechanisms used by Mycobacterium tuberculosis [the bacterial species that causes TB] to evade the body’s immune responses,” said senior author William Jacobs, Jr., Ph.D., professor of microbiology & immunology and of genetics at Einstein and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He notes that the only currently used vaccine, the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, has been notoriously inconsistent in protecting against TB. To determine how M. tuberculosis outwits the immune response,...