Our strategy
The world needs new vaccines to replace or improve BCG, the only avaible vaccine against tuberculosis. BCG has little to no efficacy in preventing pulmonary TB in (young) adults, the most common and most infectious form of the disease.
New vaccines should protect everybody from tuberculosis. The vaccines should also prevent tuberculosis in people with a latent or ‘sleeping’ TB infection (which is not contagious but can still develop into TB later in life) and be safe in people living with HIV.
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TBVI aims to develop two types of vaccines:
1) priming vaccines that could be given to newborns, which are also protective in latently infected persons and safe in persons with HIV.
2) boosting vaccines to be used in infants, adolescents or young adults, protecting both non-infected as well as latently infected persons from developing TB.
Furthermore, we have a program to develop biomarkers (used to monitor the effectiveness of new vaccines) to increase performance and speed of vaccine development. Biomarkers can provide early insight into the likely effect of a vaccine in different populations and as such can be used as a selection tool before starting long and costly clinical trials. Biomarkers can be useful tools to monitor vaccine trials.
TBVI's strategy is based on ‘Tuberculosis Vaccines: A Strategic Blueprint for the Next Decade’. This document, publised by the international vaccine community in the journal Tuberculosis 2012:92; Suppl 92. The Blueprint provides a clear picture of the current status of TB vaccine development as well as an outline of the major scientific challenges in TB vaccine development and biomarker research, and lists priorities in resource mobilisation, advocacy and communications.
TBVI has prioritised the following R&D areas and challenges from the Blueprint:
1. Mechanisms of protection (pre-discovery)
2. Antigenic vaccine repertoire and new vaccine mechanisms (discovery)
3. Development of new priming and boosting vaccines (pre-clinical to phase II development)
4. Comparative preclinical animal models that mimic TB disease (preclinical)
5. Novel approaches to identify correlates of protection through screening of 6. Design of clinical trials with appropriate endpoints for determining acceptable efficacy of TB vaccines in different target populations (clinical)
7. Rational selection of TB vaccine candidates; gating criteria and portfolio management (discovery to clinical stages of development)
More details can be found in the summary of our strategy.
