The tuberculosis (TB) pandemic continues to rampage despite widespread use of the BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccine. Novel vaccination strategies are urgently needed to arrest global transmission and prevent the uncontrolled development of multidrug-resistant forms of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Over the last two decades, considerable progress has been made in the field of vaccine developm...

The attenuated live M. bovis Bacille-Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is still the sole vaccine used against tuberculosis, but confers only variable efficacy against adult pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Though no clear explanation for this limited efficacy has been given, different hypotheses have been advanced, such as the waning of memory T-cell responses, a reduced antigenic repertoire and the inability ...

Objective(s): Despite treatment with antibiotics and vaccination with BCG, tuberculosis (TB) is still considered as one of the most important public health problems in the world. Therefore, designing and producing a more effective vaccine against TB seems urgently. In this study, immunogenicity of a fusion protein which consisting or comprising CFP-10 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the Fc-...

Mycobacterium microti, the vole bacillus, which was used as a live vaccine against tuberculosis until the 1970s, confers the same protection in humans as does Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG). However, because the efficacy of the BCG vaccine varies considerably, we have tried to develop a better vaccine by reintroducing into M. microti the complete region of difference 1 (RD1),...

Leprosy remains a major global health problem and typically occurs in regions in which tuberculosis is endemic. Vaccines are needed that protect against both infections and do so better than the suboptimal Mycobacterium bovis BCG vaccine. Here, we evaluated rBCG30, a vaccine previously demonstrated to induce protection superior to that of BCG against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium...

There are at least two approaches to antileprosy vaccines : One is the use of Mycobacterium leprae derived from M. leprae-infected armadillos (1) and the other is the use of mycobacteria other than M. leprae, which share the antigenic determinants with M. leprae such as M. nonchromogenicum (2), M. vaccae (2), M. simiae (3), M. tuberculosis H37Ra (3), and M, bovis BCG (3). Shepard et al. (3) rep...

Tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis continues to be a leading cause of mortality among bacterial diseases, and the bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is the only licensed vaccine for human use against this disease. TB prevention and control would benefit from an improved method of BCG vaccination that simplifies logistics and eliminates dangers posed by hypodermic needles without...

Tuberculosis (TB) remains an enormous global health problem, and a new vaccine against TB more potent than the current inadequate vaccine, Mycobacterium bovis BCG, is urgently needed. We describe a recombinant BCG vaccine (rBCG30) expressing and secreting the 30-kDa major secretory protein of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the primary causative agent of TB, that affords greater survival after chal...

Tuberculosis continues to ravage humanity, killing 2 million people yearly. Most cases occur in areas of the world to which the disease is endemic, where almost everyone is vaccinated early in life with Mycobacterium bovis BCG, the currently available vaccine against tuberculosis. Thus, while more-potent vaccines are needed to replace BCG, new vaccines are also needed to boost the immune protec...

BACKGROUND Influenza-related morbidity and mortality remain high. Seasonal vaccination is the backbone of influenza management but does not always result in protective antibody titers. Nonspecific effects of BCG vaccination related to enhanced function of myeloid antigen-presenting cells have been reported. We hypothesized that BCG vaccination could also enhance immune responses to influenza va...