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Session 9
Symposium Tuberculosis/HIV Co-Infection Session Time: Monday, 2 - 4 pm Room 6A-B |
Background: The currently available vaccine for tuberculosis, Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG), is administered to babies at birth in most countries. However, the efficacy of BCG in protecting against pulmonary tuberculosis is questionable, based on large-scale trials. Since there are ~8 million new cases of tuberculosis and >1.5 million deaths due to this disease each year, it is clear that a better vaccine against Mycobacterium tuberculosis is needed. There has been an increased research effort to identify and test vaccine candidates in the past decade, using animal models. New vaccine candidates include recombinant BCG expressing additional M. tuberculosis proteins, auxotrophic M. tuberculosis strains, subunit vaccines including fusion proteins and peptides, and DNA vaccines. However, obstacles to the development of an improved tuberculosis vaccine are substantial. The protective immune responses against M. tuberculosis remain incompletely understood, and latent infection occurs in most people who become infected. Conclusions: Preventing initial infection remains particularly problematic, and vaccines that reduce reactivation of latent infection are important in reducing the reservoir of infection worldwide. Identifying vaccines that are better than BCG in the current animal models has been challenging. The challenges and promise of tuberculosis vaccine development will be discussed. |
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©2002 9th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections |
