Berlin - Amid worldwide fears that tuberculosis is adapting
to thwart existing drugs, Germany began human testing this week of
what is described as the first new live vaccine against tuberculosis
for more than 80 years.
The drug, named VPM1002, is a genetic refinement of the Bacille
Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine that has been used to immunize hundreds
of millions of people since 1921.
'This has already proved more effective in preventing tuberculosis
infection in animals,' said Stefan Kaufmann of Germany's Max Planck
Institute for the Biology of Infection in Berlin.
His laboratory and the Helmholtz Centre for Research on Infection
said VPM1002 had been administered this week to human volunteers in
the western German city of Neuss as a phase-one clinical study.
The Max Planck laboratory said 9 million people fall ill with
tuberculosis round the globe every year and 2 million die of it,
making it the world's most dangerous disease after AIDS.
Many strains of tuberculosis are resistant to antibiotics and
other drugs.
BCG has the weakness that it is sometimes not recognized by the
human immune system, whereas researchers hope VPM1002 will
consistently cause a reaction and induce immunity to full-strength
tuberculosis.
But Kaufmann cautioned that it could take another 10 years until
VPM1002 wins regulatory approval for general use.
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