Alexander Ginzburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, announced that an innovative Russian vaccine against tuberculosis is now in the final stage of clinical trials. In contrast to the traditional BCG vaccine, which has provided protection against severe forms of tuberculosis in newborns for over a century, the innovative new drug is designed to prevent the actual infection itself.
The development is a genetically engineered product created by specialists at the Gamaleya Center based on proteins that interact with the human immune system at the initial stages of pathogen penetration. The relevance of the development is due to the fact that after the COVID-19 pandemic, tuberculosis has again become the leading cause of death on a global scale.