Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality. The only licensed TB vaccine, Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), has variable efficacy in protecting against pulmonary TB. Thus, the development of more effective TB vaccines is critical to control the TB epidemic. Specifically, vaccines delivered through...

conclusions it has the potential to cause disseminated infection, and an increasing number of immunocompromised patients prone to disease and the suboptimal preventive potency of this vaccine suggest the need for a global attempt to review its benefits and disadvantages. results worldwide, a proportion of new cases with multidrug-resistant tb (mdr-tb) were reported at 3.5% in 2013 without a sig...

BACKGROUND Recombinant adenovirus-vectored (Ad) tuberculosis (TB) vaccine platform has demonstrated great potential to be used either as a stand-alone or a boost vaccine in murine models. However, Ad TB vaccine remains to be evaluated in a more relevant and sensitive guinea pig model of pulmonary TB. Many vaccine candidates shown to be effective in murine models have subsequently failed to pass...

IFN-γ is a critical mediator of host defense against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. Antigen-specific CD4+ T cells have long been regarded as the main producer of IFN-γ in tuberculosis (TB), and CD4+ T cell immunity is the main target of current TB vaccine candidates. However, given the recent failures of such a TB vaccine candidate in clinical trials, strategies to harness CD4-inde...

The development of a functional biomarker assay in the tuberculosis (TB) field would be widely recognized as a major advance in efforts to develop and to test novel TB vaccine candidates efficiently. We present preliminary studies using mycobacterial growth inhibition assays (MGIAs) to detect Mycobacterium bovis BCG vaccine responses across species, and we extend this work to determine whether ...

Unsatisfactory performance of the existing BCG vaccines, especially against the adult pulmonary disease, has urged the need for an effective vaccine against tuberculosis (TB). In this study, we employed differential proteomics to obtain a list of antigens as potential vaccine candidates. Bacterial epitopes being presented at early stages on MHC class I and class II molecules of macrophages infe...

Despite the discovery of the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), Mycobacterium tuberculosis, more than 120 years ago TB remains a major worldwide health problem. Currently, the attenuated strain of M. bovis, Bacille Calmette-Güerin (BCG) is the only vaccine available against TB. Although BCG is the world's most widely used vaccine, its protective value as an anti-TB vaccine for adults in cert...

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major cause of global mortality and morbidity. However, the only available vaccine, Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), is insufficiently effective against this disease. Therefore, the development of a potent vaccine against TB is urgently needed. Virulence-associated protein Rv0577 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis was demonstrated to induce the matura...

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious global health threat and an improved vaccine is urgently needed. New candidate TB vaccines are tested using preclinical animal models such as mice, guinea pigs, cattle and non-human primates. Animals are routinely infected with virulent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) in challenge experiments to evaluate protective efficacy, raising ethical issues regarding ...