Jojanneke Nieuwenhuis writes…

Discovering and developing vaccines is a complicated and challenging task. Yet some of the biggest challenges in the development of new tuberculosis vaccines are practical rather than scientific. Funding and collaboration are amongst the most important issues.

Several tuberculosis vaccine candidates have attracted global media attention recently. Progress with the H56 vaccine developed at the Statens Serum Institute in Denmark has been discussed in several international newspapers, and in radio and television shows. And a European delegation recently visited the test site for the MVA85A vaccine in South Africa. This vaccine was developed by developed by Helen McShane of Oxford University with the support of TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI) and the Welcome Trust.

The current portfolio of TB vaccine candidates certainly looks promising. Earlier this year, in February, scientists collaborating through TBVI came together in Switzerland to present the progress they have been making in their research. Many researchers took the opportunity to stress the importance of collaboration between researchers as well as between researchers and industries, and the need for serious investment.

Promising research
“It is extremely encouraging to see that both promising priming and boosting vaccines are progressing through clinical stages, while at the same time new post-exposure vaccines like H56 are now emerging and starting to fill the pipeline”, says TBVI director Jelle Thole. He adds: “Important future challenges for the whole TB vaccine community are continued funding and selective stage-specific management along the TB vaccine pipeline. We have to ensure that on the one hand the pipeline is innovated with new vaccine concepts, but that on the other hand the most promising vaccines in clinical development are being delivered by 2020”.

Finding correlates of protection – in other words tests that very soon after vaccination could predict who will develop disease and who will be protected – would simplify and significantly shorten clinical trials. But how to get biomarker research integrated into vaccine trials is not yet clear.

A further issue is that clinical trials have until now been too small to collect enough samples. The call for improved collaboration is therefore supported by those scientists who focus on biomarker research. In their presentations several researchers called for increased group effort, specifically with regard to the collection and handling of samples. The need for continued funding was also once again expressed. “Ultimately it’s a resource issue”, said South African researcher Dr Willem Hanekom during a presentation.

New funding mechanisms
Considering the needs of the TB vaccine research community, it is a great breakthrough that the European Parliament has recently supported a resolution for the European Commission, the Council and WHO, to stress the importance of developing new tuberculosis vaccines. In this resolution, Members of the European Parliament urged that consideration should be given to introducing innovative financing mechanisms to enable the TBVI consortium to develop the urgently needed vaccines which will be necessary to eliminate tuberculosis. Discovering and developing vaccines is a complicated and challenging task but from a scientific point of view, there is a realistic chance of delivering a new TB vaccine within the next ten years. However, for successful delivery to take place, the support of both governments and industries remains crucial.

The TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI) is organising a symposium about innovative funding for TB vaccine research on World Tuberculosis Day, 24th March. The meeting will be held in Paris and registration is possible via this link: http://www.tbvi.eu/news-agenda/news/news-message/world-tb-day-round-table-and-symposium-in-paris.html

Jojanneke Nieuwenhuis is Associate Communications and Advocacy Relations at the TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI)