"Challenging" would be an understatement when it comes to
describing the WHO's latest plan for eliminating tuberculosis. Challenging. But
certainly not impossible. In fact, TBVI's research partners, many of whom came
together in Switzerland in early February 2011, are carefully optimistic about
the past year's advances in vaccine research.
Dr
Christian Lienhardt, who heads the Research Movement of the Stop TB Partnership
painted a clear picture. Tuberculosis research lacks money on every level.
Lienhardt happily noted that funding specifically for TB vaccine research has
increased in the past two years but much more support is needed. In that light,
it is a great breakthrough that the European Parliament accepted a resolution
to support the research and development of tuberculosis vaccines. An
overwhelming majority of the parliament recently voted tuberculosis vaccine
research onto the agenda of the European Commission, calling upon the
commission to explore new funding channels.
Successfully
developing a new vaccine seems closer than ever before. A broad collection of
candidate vaccines is currently being researched and several of those have now
reached various stages of clinical trials. This collection of candidates is
called the vaccine pipeline and researchers present at the research gathering
in Switzerland were very positive about its content. Lienhardt referred to the
pipeline as "robust" and challenged researchers and other partners to maintain
it.
New vaccines are crucial in the fight
against tuberculosis. Research shows that the introduction of a new vaccine
could reduce the number of new TB cases by ninety percent within thirty to
forty years. This makes the development of vaccines an essential part of the
Stop TB strategy. Hard work over the past decade is starting to pay off with
some promising results but the process of developing, testing and licensing new
vaccines is a complicated and lengthy one.
In
order to battle tuberculosis, several different vaccines will be needed;
so-called “priming” vaccines that can be given to newborns and “boosting”
vaccines to be used for infants, adolescents and adults. Vaccines should not
only prevent people from initial infection, they also have to prevent people
with a latent infection from developing active tuberculosis. In addition to
this, vaccines have to be safe for HIV-infected people.
The process of bringing a candidate
vaccine from initial discovery to licensed vaccine involves different phases of
testing and trying. Many candidates will not survive this process and trials
are expensive enough to only allow the very best candidates to enter. Therefore
dozens of candidate vaccines are needed. Currently, TBVI supports a portfolio
of 39 candidates that are in different phases of development and testing. The
organization is hopeful that two of those candidates could make it to the
market by 2020 and another two around 2025. Worldwide, there are about ten
candidates in various stages of clinical trials and about 50 more in
development.
Funding is key in this process, however
the TBVI research gathering brought up another major requirement for success;
collaboration. Group efforts and partnerships are valued important by
researchers.
WHO's Uli Fruth is nothing less then excited about what is
happening at this front: "During this meeting, I was delighted to see a
plethora of collaborations that the consortium has stimulated amongst the
partners, which in the absence of the TBVI structure would probably not have
happened." The goal of eliminating TB by 2050 is particularly
ambitious but the introduction of new vaccines would certainly be a great step
forward. Looking at current research progress and the candidate vaccines
available, this should be possible. For this to happen though, ongoing
attention, a considerable amount of funding and collaboration of research are
fundamental.
