BCG Vaccine and Beyond: Innovations in Tuberculosis Vaccination and Inflammation-Related Disease Prevention

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X). This special issue belongs to the section "Vaccines against Infectious Diseases".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 1127

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Shanghai Institute of Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Interests: Mycobacterium tuberculosis; BCG; vaccine; infection and immunity; tuberculosis; diagnosis; trained immunity; immunotherapy

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Guest Editor
Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Interests: tuberculosis; vaccine; adaptive immunity; trained immunity; innate immune memory; alevolar macrophage

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases globally, claiming over 1.3 million lives annually despite decades of research and public health efforts. The Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine, developed a century ago, provides partial protection against severe forms of childhood TB, but has limited efficacy in preventing pulmonary TB in adolescents and adults. There is an urgent need to accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation TB vaccines. Recent advances in immunology, genomics, and vaccine delivery systems have reignited hope for achieving the WHO’s End TB Strategy targets. This Special Issue seeks to consolidate cutting-edge research and foster interdisciplinary collaboration to address critical gaps in TB vaccine science and implementation. We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue focused on “Tuberculosis Vaccines and Vaccination”.

This Special Issue aims to gather articles presenting state-of-the-art research, novel discoveries, and the latest progress of novel tuberculosis vaccines and vaccination in pre-clinical and clinical studies.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  1. Novel approaches to improve the protective efficacy of current TB vaccines;
  2. Novel vaccine delivery methods;
  3. Novel insights and approaches to TB vaccine development in pre-clinical and clinical studies;
  4. Immune correlates of protection studies in tuberculosis vaccine research;
  5. The role of vaccine-induced innate immune memory in tuberculosis vaccines;
  6. The role of tissue-resident memory cells in tuberculosis vaccines.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Xiao-Yong Fan
Prof. Dr. Zhi-Dong Hu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • tuberculosis
  • vaccine
  • vaccination
  • immune response
  • adjuvant
  • T-cell
  • immune memory
  • adaptive immunity
  • innate immune memory
  • correlates of protection

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

23 pages, 2140 KB  
Review
Stopping Tuberculosis at the Gate: The Role of M. tuberculosis Adhesins in Infection and Intervention
by Haoyan Yang, Yinuo Ma, Xinkui Lei, Siyu Chai, Sigen Zhang, Guimin Su, Songping Li and Lin Du
Vaccines 2025, 13(7), 676; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines13070676 - 24 Jun 2025
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Abstract
The global burden of tuberculosis (TB), exacerbated by the rise of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), underscores the need for alternative intervention strategies. One promising approach is to block the infection at its earliest stage—bacterial adhesion to host cells—thereby preventing colonization [...] Read more.
The global burden of tuberculosis (TB), exacerbated by the rise of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), underscores the need for alternative intervention strategies. One promising approach is to block the infection at its earliest stage—bacterial adhesion to host cells—thereby preventing colonization and transmission without exerting selective pressure. Adhesins, surface-exposed molecules mediating this critical interaction, have therefore emerged as attractive targets for early prevention. This review outlines the infection process driven by bacterial adhesion and describes the architecture of the M. tuberculosis outer envelope, emphasizing components that contribute to host interaction. We comprehensively summarize both non-protein and protein adhesins, detailing their host receptors, biological roles, and experimental evidence. Recent progress in the computational prediction of adhesins, particularly neural network-based tools like SPAAN, is also discussed, highlighting its potential to accelerate adhesin discovery. Additionally, we present a detailed, generalized workflow for predicting M. tuberculosis adhesins, which synthesizes current approaches and provides a comprehensive framework for future studies. Targeting bacterial adhesion presents a therapeutic strategy that interferes with the early stages of infection while minimizing the risk of developing drug resistance. Consequently, anti-adhesion strategies may serve as valuable complements to conventional therapies and support the development of next-generation TB vaccines and treatments. Full article
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