IISc develops potential vaccine candidate against TB

Researchers at the IISc have developed a potential vaccine candidate that could offer better protection against tuberculosis, the premier institute has said.

The material has shown promising results when tested on human cells in lab settings, and the next step would be animal testing, said Rachit Agarwal, an assistant professor at the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering, who headed the study.

Currently, the only available vaccine against tuberculosis is BCG, administered to infants. But this vaccine's efficacy reduces over time, and it could be unsafe for immunocompromised persons, Agarwal added.

While the BCG vaccine uses a weakened form of a bacterial species, scientists had tried to develop other vaccines using just a few proteins from bacteria. But research showed that these vaccines had low efficacy as well.

"So our idea was to use a lot more antigens from the bacteria, which are available on their Outer Membrane Vesicles (OMVs). But OMVs can differ in size and stability, so we stabilised them by coating them on gold nanoparticles," Agarwal said.

The coating was enabled by forcing together OMVs and gold nanoparticles through a 100-nm filter, said team member Edna George.

"We are hoping to start animal testing next year. Human trials will happen much later, depending on the results of the animal trials," Agarwal said.