Research Progress of New Tuberculosis Vaccines and Vaccine Design

Dear Colleagues,

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, and still a global public health problem. Mtb infection can arouse host innate and adaptive immune responses when entering the body. Innate immunity has an important role against Mtb infection. Airway epithelial cells, macrophages, neutrophils, dendritic cells (DCs), natural killer cells (NK), and mast cells, among others, are the major components of innate immunity. The adaptive immunity, including cellular and humoral immune responses, also play important roles against TB. However, although we know the importance of innate and adaptive immune responses against Mtb, the mechanisms behind this need to be further elucidated.

The only licensed vaccine for tuberculosis is the BCG vaccine; however, BCG can only afford partial protection against tuberculosis in children. There is an urgent need for new vaccine development around the world. Current TB vaccine development is mainly based on the following strategies: attenuated live vaccines, subunit vaccines, viral vector vaccines, and inactivated vaccines. Although the M72/AS01E candidate has achieved 49.7% efficacy in TB prevention, there are still some challenges ahead for vaccine research and development: (1) finding more and better animal models for the efficacy evaluation of TB vaccines; (2) elucidating the protective mechanisms of the vaccine candidates including the cellular and antibodies immune responses; (3) improving the efficacy of vaccines licensed in clinical trials; and (4) developing a more efficient, cost-saving, safe, and available TB vaccine.

For this Special Issue of Vaccines, we kindly invite authors to submit an original research article or a review to highlight:

(1) Novel discovery of candidate protective antigens of M. tuberculosis;

(2) The mechanism of the interaction between M. tuberculosis and the host;

(3) The screening, identification, and validation of immunodominant epitopes of M. tuberculosis in silico, vivo, or vitro;

(4) The construction and validation of multi-epitope vaccines for TB prevention;

(5) New bioinformatics or immunoinformatic tools for TB vaccine development;

(6) The trained immunity induced by the BCG vaccine and its potential roles on COVID-19 prevention;

(7) The development of animal models used in TB vaccine evaluation.

Dr. Wenping Gong
Dr. Ashok Aspatwar
Guest Editors

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