Assessment of Goat Tuberculosis Model for Use in Vaccine Trials

Progressin development of tuberculosis (TB) vaccines largely depends on the availability of animal models to test their safety and efficacy before starting with expensive clinical trials. The present study provides a comprehensive evaluation of bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) effects on clinical, immunological, pathological and bacteriological parameters in goats after an experimental challenge with Mycobacterium caprae.Vaccination of goats with BCG reduced the volume of lung gross lesions, the bacterial load in pulmonary lymph nodes and increased the weight gain when compared to unvaccinated animals. Differences in post-challenge IFN-γ responses to ESAT-6/CFP-10 were found to be a useful follow-up biomarker of disease progression and vaccine efficacy. Our results endorse this animal model for further TB vaccine trials.