Inhaled tuberculosis vaccine more effective than tradit...( CAMBRIDGE Mass. -- A novel aerosol v...),Health

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experimental animals than a comparable dose of the traditional injected vaccine, researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The aerosol vaccine -- under development through a collaboration between Harvard University and the international not-for-profit Medicine in Need (MEND) -- could provide a low-cost, needle-free TB treatment that is highly stable at room temperature.

"Rising rates of tuberculosis and drug-resistant disease in developing countries have amply illustrated the need for more effective vaccines," says David Edwards, the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "While most new TB vaccines continue to call for needle injection, our vaccine could provide safer, more consistent protection by eliminating these injections and the need for refrigerated storage. We see great promise for this new treatment."

Says Barry R. Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health: "Tuberculosis is one of the most resistant and challenging diseases to protect against, and the successful results of aerosol delivery using nanoparticle technology offers a potentially new platform for immunization. Were the animal results here confirmed in human studies, this technology could be used not only for TB vaccines, but those protecting against other infectious diseases as well."

The current PNAS paper by Edwards, Bloom, and colleagues at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, MEND South Africa, the Harvard School of Public Health and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Manta is based on studies involving guinea pigs, a species of rodent highly sensitive to TB.
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