Novel Vaccine Candidates against Tuberculosis

Abstract

Ranking above AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) is the ninth leading cause of death affecting and killing many individuals every year. Drugs' efficacy is limited by a series of problems such as Multi- Drug Resistance (MDR) and Extensively-Drug Resistance (XDR). Meanwhile, the only licensed vaccine BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) existing for over 90 years is not effective enough. Consequently, it is essential to develop novel vaccines for TB prevention and immunotherapy. This paper provides an overall review of the TB prevalence, immune system response against TB and recent progress of TB vaccine research and development. Several vaccines in clinical trials are described as well as LAM-based candidates.

Keywords: LAM-based candidates; Lipoarabinomannan; Tuberculosis; immunotherapy; response; vaccine.