A Phase 3 clinical trial for M72, a new candidate vaccine against pulmonary tuberculosis will be conducted in South Africa. The head of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr Trevor Mundel, said this week that they were very optimistic that it would be an effective and safe vaccine. However, this will be determined by the success of the Phase 3 trials.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust announced on Wednesday that they would jointly fund a $550-million Phase 3 clinical trial of M72, a new candidate vaccine against pulmonary tuberculosis, in several countries, including South Africa.
If it works, it will be the first new TB vaccine in more than 100 years and the first that is efficacious in teenagers and adults. The Phase 3 trial will run until earliest 2027 but could go on as long as 2029.
Current situation
The only TB vaccine currently available is Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), which was first used in 1921.
It is given to babies and young children to protect them from TB, but offers only limited protection against pulmonary TB for adolescents and adults.
Dr Trevor Mundel, the head of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said this week that M72 had shown much promise in preventing TB in people with latent infections, but who are not ill. This, he pointed out, was an important segment of the population to target.
He explained that, unlike Covid-19, for example, animal studies do not provide very accurate results for TB vaccines.
Burden of disease
The World Global...
