WORLDWIDE PATHOGEN: About one-third of the human population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (cultures shown above), some 13 million of which are actually sick with TB.CDC/GEORGE KUBICA
In 2009, an international consortium of researchers initiated an efficacy trial for a new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine—the first in more than 80 years. With high hopes, a team led by the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative inoculated 2,797 infants in the country, half with a vaccine called MVA85A and half with a placebo. They followed the children for up to three years and finally announced the result last February. It was not good news (Lancet, 381:1021-28, 2013).
“It did not work,” says Thomas Evans, president and CEO of Aeras, the Rockville, Maryland-based nonprofit that sponsored the trial. The vaccine did not protect children against the deadly disease.
“The whole field was disappointed,” says Robert Ryall, TB vaccine project leader at Sanofi Pasteur, who was not ...
