TB vaccine

8 December 2004

For the first time in 80 years, a new TB vaccine has successfully passed the first phase of clinical trials.

The results raise the exciting possibility that people could be protected from a disease that claims two million lives worldwide each year.

The new vaccine was tested by scientists at the University of Oxford, led by Dr Helen McShane with funding from the Wellcome Trust. Dr McShane's MVA85A vaccine was not designed to replace the existing BCG vaccination but to enhance it. The three-year study, which was conducted in Oxford and involved 42 adults, showed the vaccine was safe and produced an unexpectedly high number of T cells which fight the disease.

The incidence of TB in the developing world remains worryingly high, partly because BCG inoculations are ineffective. The Oxford group's new results show that when BCG vaccination is followed by MVA85A, people responded with some of the strongest immune responses ever seen in a human vaccine – in some cases up to 30 times the levels produced with a single BCG vaccination.

The next phase of trials will assess whether the vaccine actually stops people from contracting TB.

External links

The new results are published in Nature Medicine: See results