TAG’s 2023 Pipeline Report: TB vaccines

Treatment Action Group (TAG) released the first TB chapter of its 2023 Pipeline Report offering a contextualized overview of TB vaccine candidates currently in clinical development. Tuberculosis Vaccines by Mike Frick is now available online as a downloadable PDF.

We cannot end TB without new and effective vaccines. Hearteningly, much progress has been made to that end: the pipeline is more robust than it ever has been, with tens of thousands of participants being recruited into Phase III trials across the globe. In 2023, some $600 million was pledged toward TB vaccine research, including $550 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust for a long-awaited Phase III trial of M72/AS01E slated to start in 2024. These commitments dwarf the woefully inadequate $143 million spent on TB vaccine R&D in 2022.

And yet, any celebration of these gains must be tempered with caution: the wait for an effective new TB vaccine has lasted generations, and even as advancement has accelerated in recent years the process has been slow, underfunded, and too often hindered by government inaction and industry disinvestment. While the $600 million pledged to TB vaccine R&D in 2023 is over four times higher than what materialized the year before, it’s still less than half of the $1.25 billion annually that Stop TB Partnership estimates is needed to stay on track to end TB by 2030. That TB vaccine funding gains in 2023 overwhelmingly came from the philanthropic sector emphasizes the appalling complacency of governments and industry groups on this front: we demand more resources and urgency from each.

Finally, as we eagerly anticipate the arrival of a TB vaccine, “vaccine preparedness” —  activities meant to smooth the transition from clinical development to implementation — are paramount. Engaging TB-affected communities at every step of this process to ensure they’re aware of a new vaccine, able to access it, and otherwise situated to benefit from it is the best way to protect the universal human right to science.

For more TB news, check out the latest edition of the TB Online Weekly Newsletter (#31, 13 October 2023) with the latest TB advocacy and research updates.