Vaccines Against Mycobacterium tuberculosis: An Overview from Preclinical Animal Studies to the Clinic

More than a decade ago the World Health Organization (WHO) declared tuberculosis (TB) a global emergency and called on the biomedical community to strengthen its efforts to combat this scourge. The WHO predicts that by 2020 almost one billion people will be infected, with 35 million dying from the disease if research for new approaches to the management of this disease is unsuccessful (1). Designing a better TB vaccine is a high priority research goal. This chapter will review the various strategies currently being used to prevent and treat TB. In spite of the numerous new vaccine candidates in clinical trials, and several others in the preclinical pipeline, no clear TB vaccine development strategy has emerged.