Gates Research Institute to Develop Glaxo’s Promising TB Vaccine

(Bloomberg) -- GlaxoSmithKline Plc licensed a promising vaccine against tuberculosis to the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute in a move the drugmaker said will help bring prevention of the deadly disease to poor countries.

The Gates group will lead development of the vaccine candidate and sponsor future clinical tests, London-based Glaxo said in an emailed statement. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t provided.

Tuberculosis, a bacterial infection often seen in the lungs, infects about 10 million people annually, killing about 1.5 million. A live attenuated vaccine in use for nearly a century, called Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, prevents severe disease in infants and young children, but gives limited protection to adolescents and adults. Mid-stage testing has shown Glaxo’s experimental shot to be effective in about half of people who get it for as long as three years.

With such alliances “we can take a more sustainable approach to global health, focusing our efforts and expertise on science and research, while partnering with others to ensure their development and delivery,” said Philip Thomson, Glaxo’s president for global affairs, in a statement.

Glaxo has been paring product development programs to focus on the most lucrative opportunities, such as cancer drugs. The company offloaded its vaccines against Ebola virus to the Sabin Vaccine Institute in August.

TB is the leading killer of people with HIV, and the Glaxo shot has been developed in collaboration with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. The vaccine contains an engineered protein that’s modeled on those of tuberculosis. It’s boosted with the company’s AS01 adjuvant, which is designed to heighten the body’s immune response and better prepare it for a bacterial infection.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Paton in London at jpaton4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, John Lauerman, Marthe Fourcade

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