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ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

TB memory

A new TB vaccine protected monkeys better than BCG

October 22, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

A New Orleans team has created a live attenuated tuberculosis vaccine that induces greater protection in monkeys than the standard BCG. While there's one more virulence gene to knock out, the group believes the compound could become the first new vaccine for TB since the 1920s.

The researchers, led by Deepak Kaushal, a professor at Tulane University, produced the vaccine by knocking out a gene in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) that hadn't been previously recognized as a virulence factor, and saw the compound protected seven out of seven monkeys infected with a lethal strain of Mtb. By contrast, the BCG vaccine protected only two out of seven monkeys in the control arm. ...