Prof. Kaufmann, chair of the scientific board of TBVAC2020 and member of the TBVI board, was honored with the Gagna A. & Ch. Van Heck Prize in recognition of his and his team’s work on the immunology to tuberculosis which led to the development of novel intervention measures against this disease.
Interestingly, this prize is generally rewarded for research on a disease for which drug treatment is not available. Apparently the dramatic increase on MDR-TB and XDR-TB has convinced the committee that large part of tuberculosis can no longer be controlled by currently available measures.