Breakthrough TB vaccine shows promise in animal studies

A research team at Johns Hopkins Medicine has developed a nasal DNA vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), the world’s leading cause of death from infectious disease. The vaccine, which fuses two TB genes, relMtb and Mip3α, has shown promising results in animal studies, helping infected mice clear the disease bacteria faster, reducing lung inflammation, and preventing relapse after treatment ended.

The vaccine works by directing the immune system to fight drug-tolerant bacterial survivors that can endure antibiotic treatment. “Administered together with first-line TB drug therapy, our intranasal DNA fusion vaccine helped infected mice clear the disease bacteria faster, reduced lung inflammation, and prevented relapse after treatment ended,” said Dr. Styliani Karanika, lead author of the study.

The vaccine also enhanced the effectiveness of a powerful TB drug combination, suggesting it could be used to treat drug-resistant TB. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that TB is spread asymptomatically by around 2 billion people, and in 2024, it was the leading cause of death from a single infectious disease.

Further research is needed before human clinical trials can begin. “These nonhuman primate data are encouraging because they show that the Mip3α/relMtb vaccine can generate durable, antigen-stimulated immune responses in an animal model whose immune system more closely resembles that of humans,” said Dr. Karanika.