Gates Foundation to fund trial of long-awaited new tuberculosis vaccine candidate
“If this vaccine could reduce the disease by 50%, that has tremendous implications worldwide.”
The Gates Foundation unveiled plans Wednesday to fund a long-awaited trial for what, if proven effective, would be the first new tuberculosis vaccine in over a century.
The 26,000-person, Phase 3 study, set to begin next year, will test a vaccine known as M72/AS01 that showed promising results from a smaller trial in 2019. The findings stoked excitement at the time. But a larger, confirmatory study was delayed as GSK, the company then developing it, transferred the shot to the Gates Medical Research Institute, an affiliate of the foundation, rather than move forward with the vaccine itself.
What's Your Reaction?
