The disease cannot be eliminated without new vaccines, according to several WHO studies. Therefore TBVI, together with over 50 research partners, is working on the development of several types of new TB vaccines and biomarkers (indicators used to monitor the efficacy of new vaccines). Vaccines are needed to protect children, adolescents and adults from getting ill from TB, and we need therapeutic vaccines which are able to shorten the long and burdensome treatment of patients, especially those with MDR and XDR TB.
In the past years, dozens of vaccine candidates have been developed in laboratories and more are currently being developed. Many of them are about to enter, or have already entered the (pre)clinical stages of development, which are very expensive and for which only limited funding is available. Therefore TBVI introduced the method of portfolio management: a very efficient and effective method of advancing a vaccine through the pipeline. It is a quality decision-making process that seeks to maximise probability of success against acceptable cost and risk.
According to Jelle Thole, Executive Director of TBVI, this approach involves the use of priority setting and entry criteria to select the most promising candidates and to allow entry to new vaccine candidates so as to diversify the portfolio. "Priority setting aims to select the best candidate(s) for further development and down select others that seem less promising. The main criteria being used for comparison are technical feasibility, timelines of development, access conditions, projected health impact, commercial risks and prospects of the candidate."
"But ensuring that new promising candidates gain admission to the portfolio, is essential as well," he continues. The development of a well-balanced and diversified portfolio is a process which builds from a continuous flow of good scientific concepts, molecules or candidate vaccines into a decision-making process. The big challenges facing TB vaccine development are insufficient understanding of protective immune mechanisms, the lack of correlates of protection, and the poor predictive value of animal models. Several candidate vaccines in the current TB vaccine portfolio are based on the concept of critical antigens and desirable immune responses. TBVI wants to diversify the current portfolio by acquiring vaccines with novel effector mechanisms, so as to increase the chance of success.
About TBVI
TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI) is an independent non-profit foundation that facilitates the development of safe, more effective vaccines to protect future generations against tuberculosis. Since its formation in 2008, TBVI has brought together an integrated network of over 50 mainly European universities, institutes and the private sector in the development of new vaccines that are globally accessible and affordable.