Vaccinations have begun in a Phase 1 human clinical trial testing a freeze-dried, temperature-stable formulation of an experimental tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate. The trial is being conducted at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine Center for Vaccine Development and will enroll as many as 48 healthy adult volunteers aged 18 to 55 years. The experimental vaccine, called ID93, was developed by scientists at the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is supporting the trial through a contract to IDRI.

Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious cause of death worldwide, killing roughly 1.6 million people in 2017. In the past 200 years, TB claimed the lives of more than 1 billion people — more deaths than from malaria, influenza, smallpox, HIV/AIDS, cholera and plague combined.

A more intensive biomedical research approach is necessary to control and ultimately eliminate tuberculosis (TB), according to a perspective published in the March 2018 issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In the article, authors Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Robert W. Eisinger, Ph.D., special assistant for scientific projects at NIAID, discuss the need to modernize TB research by applying new diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccine approaches. The perspective is based on a lecture delivered by Dr. Fauci on Nov. 17, 2017 in Moscow at the first World Health Organization Global Ministerial Conference, “Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era: A Multisectoral Response.”

A one-month antibiotic regimen to prevent active tuberculosis (TB) disease was at least as safe and effective as the standard nine-month therapy for people living with HIV, according to the results of a large international clinical trial. Adults and adolescents in the trial were more likely to complete the short-course regimen — consisting of daily doses of the antibiotics rifapentine and isoniazid for four weeks—than the standard nine-month regimen of daily isoniazid.

The Division of AIDS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health in conjunction with Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery–Dubai will host a webinar, The role of TB infection in TB elimination on 27 September 2017 at 10:30 – 12:00 PM EDT.

Subgroups of tuberculosis (TB)-causing bacteria can persist even when antibiotics wipe out most of the overall population. The need to eliminate these persistent subpopulations is one reason why TB treatment regimens are so lengthy. Now, researchers have shown that a single protein allows mycobacteria to generate diverse populations that can avoid TB drugs. The protein may be a target for intervention; blocking it might result in less mycobacterial diversity and shorten TB treatment courses. The research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

African scientists will conduct genomic research on kidney disease, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, tuberculosis and African sleeping sickness through inaugural grants of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa Consortium (H3Africa). The grants were announced by the two funding organizations, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust, a global charity based in London. The organizations also awarded grants for the development of an African bioinformatics network and two pilot biorepositories, which are banks that maintain biospecimens for future scientific investigation.