Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the most devastating infectious diseases worldwide, killing over 4,000 people every day. Prevention of tuberculosis infection by novel vaccines would provide the most cost-effective approach to end the disease. The only existing licensed vaccine BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin) protects children from severe forms of disseminated TB disease, but fails to reliably prevent pulmonary TB in adolescent and adult populations. Improved and novel vaccines are urgently required. Though few promising TB candidate vaccines exist, innovative new platforms and strategies are needed to ensure that the most effective and affordable vaccines are developed and/or improved, and to adequately (re-)fill the pipeline of candidate vaccines.
To this end, TBVAC-HORIZON will - with specific focus on investigations of the immune protection in the lung - innovate and diversify the global TB vaccine pipeline and accelerate the development of novel candidate vaccines. This will be achieved by bottom-up research on composition, spatial organisation and functioning of protective immune responses in the Mtb infected lung (WP1), performing clinical and medicinal studies to evaluate whether mucosal revaccination with BCG and candidate live attenuated vaccines improves protective efficacy (WP2), by the identification of host immune response profiles and biomarkers of natural and vaccine-induced immune protection in the lung (WP3) and by support of next generation TB vaccine development (WP4) through standardised head-to-head vaccine candidate testing in animal models, identification and evaluation of novel antigens, delivery systems and adjuvanted formulations, and by development of a new GMP platform for live attenuated vaccines. Aside from these four scientific workpackages a dedicated workpackage for coordination, management, dissemination and exploitation (WP5) ensures optimal harmonisation and synchronisation of all partners' activities and maintaining the connection and links to external collaborators and entities by profiting from the global network of the Project Coordinator TBVI.
TBVAC-HORIZON builds on the extraordinarily successful, long-standing collaboration in previous EU FP5-, FP6-, FP7 and FP8 (H2020)-funded TB vaccine and biomarker R&D projects. Overall, 19 key partners and global leaders with outstanding expertise in the TB R&D field from Europe are partners in the project consortium. The Consortium's research activities are very strongly interwoven. The generated knowledge will be exploited to develop mucosal strategies for translation towards clinical evaluation and implementation. Europe’s leading role in TB vaccine research and innovation will thus be consolidated.
