Journal of Infectious Diseases
Volume 207 Issue 8 April 15, 2013
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jid/current

EDITORIAL COMMENTARIES
Therapeutic Vaccination: Hope for Untreatable Tuberculosis?
David N. McMurray
J Infect Dis. (2013) 207(8): 1193-1194 doi:10.1093/infdis/jis429
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/207/8/1193.extract

Extract
Although tuberculosis remains a major public health threat globally [1], promising advances have been made in the past several years in the development of new tools to control the pandemic. These include rapid diagnostic tests [2], new drug regimens that may shorten the total treatment time and improve compliance [3], and novel drug delivery systems that may allow sustained therapeutic levels with lower drug doses [4]. There are currently more than a dozen tuberculosis vaccines in human trials that are based upon a variety of platforms, including viral-vectored, recombinant bacille Calmette-Guérin, and protein/peptide vaccines [5].

Thus, the progress made in recent years in the battle against this ancient scourge is remarkable.

Unfortunately, control of tuberculosis is complicated by a number of factors, not the least of which are the interactions with human immunodeficiency infection and the development of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant strains [6]. In parts of the world where these resistant strains are common, treatment of patients with tuberculosis is difficult, if not impossible, because of the paucity of effective drugs. For such patients, an immune-stimulatory therapy that effectively engages patients’ own immune systems to assist the drugs in controlling the infection would be a major asset in the clinic setting. The therapeutic vaccine described by Coler et al [7] in this issue of the Journal of Infectious …