New TB vaccine from Aeras enters clinical testing

The Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation says that it will initiate a clinical trial of an investigational live recombinant tuberculosis vaccine to be led by researchers at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The announcement was made at the Second Global Forum on TB Vaccine Development taking place in Tallinn, Estonia.

Building on more than a decade of global scientific research, Aeras scientists have engineered a new investigational vaccine, called AERAS-422, which will undergo clinical trials to evaluate its properties for interrupting TB at all stages of infection, including initial infection, latency and reactivation.

“Moving our lead in-house vaccine from the laboratory into clinical testing is an important milestone for Aeras and its partners. Finding a potential replacement for the currently available TB vaccine, which was invented almost 90 years ago, is a primary goal in our mission,” said Thomas Evans, Aeras’ chief scientific officer. “Based on data from preclinical studies, we are cautiously optimistic about the potential of this vaccine candidate to be safer and more immunogenic than the currently available vaccine,” he added.