The vaccine, known as rBCG30, was constructed by Dr. Marcus Horwitz and his research team at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The live vaccine, which uses the current vaccine called BCG (Bacille Calmette-Gurin) as a delivery vehicle, over-expresses the major protein secreted by the TB organism. The Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, the world's only organization dedicated solely to developing and distributing new TB vaccines, conducted the preclinical development and regulatory activities required to begin the study to test the vaccine in humans, in collaboration with Dr. Horwitz.
"The development of the vaccine required a decade-long effort, and we are gratified to see the vaccine progress to clinical trials," said Dr. Horwitz, professor of medicine and microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at UCLA.
Each year 8 million people develop new cases of TB, and 2 million people die of the disease nearly all of them in the developing world. The current TB vaccine used throughout most of the world, BCG, is almost a century old and has limited efficacy. In conjunction with drug therapy, a more effective vaccine would greatly reduce the TB disease burden around the world.
First developed and tested in TB-susceptible guinea pigs, the new vaccine was found to be more potent than the commercially available BCG vaccine. Funding for basic research, animal
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Contact: Rachel Champeau
rchampeau@support.ucla.edu
310-794-2270
Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation
17-Feb-2004