Current transmission prevention methods: vaccination

© 2014 Future Medicine Ltd. Although one Millennium Development Goal target, to halt and reverse the TB epidemic, has been achieved, there were still 8.7 million new TB cases and 1.4 million deaths from TB in 2011 [1]. The rate of decline needs to increase in order to progress towards eliminating the disease and effective prophylactic vaccination is key to achieving this. The only existing licensed prophylactic TB vaccine is bacillus Calmette-Guerin, an attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis, which has been in use since 1920. Over the past decade, a number of novel TB vaccine candidates have been developed and many are now in clinical trials. Validated preclinical animal models of TB and immune biomarkers of protection are required to facilitate selection of which candidate vaccines should enter early-stage clinical trials, and which should progress to large-scale efficacy testing.