Economic support from Germany for the Aragonese vaccine against tuberculosis

We share the news with you Herald of Aragón where Carlos Martín, professor of Microbiology at the University of Zaragoza and researcher at IIS Aragón, gives his opinion on the Aragonese vaccine against tuberculosis that will receive a financial boost of 9,2 million euros from Germany.

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The Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany has approved the contribution of 9,2 million euros for phase 3 of the tuberculosis vaccine project designed by Carlos Martín's team at the University of Zaragoza and manufactured Biofabri, a subsidiary of the Zendal group. The "father" of MTBVAC, the professor of Microbiology Carlos Martín, considers that this support from Germany for the vaccine designed in Aragon "demonstrates that the German authorities believe that it works", as all the phases through which it has gone through so far point out. past.

The vaccine MTVBAC is a candidate to improve the current BCG which was born in a laboratory of the Faculty of Medicine of the Aragonese capital and is developed within the framework of an alliance between the public and private sectors and its partners, Biofabri, the Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI) and IAVI. Five of the million euros will go to trials with babies and the remaining four and a half for adults. 

MTBVAC is the only live attenuated vaccine against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in development, the most effective and potentially longest-lasting single-dose disease preventative for newborns and for TB prevention in adults and adolescents.  

The only current TB vaccine, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), was developed more than 100 years ago, but no is effective in pulmonary forms of the disease andn adolescents and adults, who are the most likely to develop and transmit the disease.

If MTBVAC is ultimately proven effective, it could have a transformative impact in high-TB burden countries, significantly reducing TB-related illnesses and deaths and breaking the cycle of disease transmission, thereby It would represent a breakthrough in global public health.

This funding provides “key support to carry out tuberculosis vaccine efficacy testing in trials in infants, adolescents and adults,” explained IAVI President and CEO Mark Feinberg.

«Biofabri, the driving laboratory of the MTBVAC and sponsor of the phase 3 trial of MTBVAC in neonates, is very satisfied with the enrollment rate of this clinical trial which is being better than expected. "MTBVAC is a single-dose vaccine that is destined to be an affordable and accessible vaccine worldwide against tuberculosis disease," highlighted the CEO of Biofabri, Esteban Rodríguez.

This funding will assist IAVI and its partners in their efforts to initiate an efficacy trial in adults and adolescents and to complete the ongoing Phase III clinical trial of MTBVAC in neonates, launched in South Africa, Madagascar and Senegal in late 2022.

For its part, Carlos Martín, in statements to Heraldo, positively values ​​this German contribution, which recognizes the excellent track record of the MTBVAC vaccine in achieving the objective set by the WHO of improving the effectiveness of the current BCG with an antidote that better protects against pulmonary forms of the disease and tackles multidrug resistance. However, he recalled that To conclude the trial phase in babies, a total of 60 million are needed of euros and, with those contributed by Germany, 35 million would still be missing to complete trials of testing the MTBVAC vaccine in children in countries where tuberculosis is endemic. In this sense, he encouraged companies or other Aragonese entities to commit to this line of research by providing donations to complete tests that, according to all indications, will conclude satisfactorily. In this way, it would be possible to carry out a vaccine against tuberculosis born and supported in Aragon and with global projection. 

The professor of Microbiology at the University of Zaragoza created a few months ago, with the support of researchers from his team, the T.End foundation (https://t-end.org/) to look for donation lines that would allow us to achieve the goal. of the WHO: the eradication of tuberculosis. 

Following the end of the Covid-19 emergency, tuberculosis is on track to once again become the world's deadliest infectious disease, claiming the lives of approximately 1,6 million people in 2021, of which approximately 14% They were children. It is estimated that a quarter of the population is infected with Koch's bacillus, although one in ten develops the disease. Thus, some 10,6 million people fell ill with tuberculosis in 2021, and the disease is one of the 10 leading causes of death worldwide. One of the most serious problems for patients is multi-resistance to antibiotics, because they are long treatments, lasting half a year. This multidrug resistance affected half a million tuberculosis patients in 2021. In fact, among those affected by AIDS, deaths occur in patients who cannot survive multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis.