TB vaccines for the World

In September 2003, Montreal hosted the first international conference on “TB Vaccines for the World”. The timing of the conference was prescient. Two major contracts for screening TB vaccines, the NIH vaccine screening contract and the European Union Fifth Framework TB Vaccine Cluster were coming to an end as was a major 5 year international initiative to develop vaccines against bovine tuberculosis. For the first time the TB vaccine community was getting a glimpse of the most promising vaccine candidates identified using a number of different animal models. Moreover, the first Phase I human trial of a new vaccine for TB based on boosting BCG with an attenuated vaccinia virus expressing Ag85A of M. tuberculosis, MVA85A, had just begun. In addition, the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation had just been launched to apply an industrial pipeline approach to drive vaccine candidates through to clinical trials. The aim of this special edition of Tuberculosis is to encapsulate this defining moment in the development of TB vaccines so that it may be used it as a yardstick against which future progress may be measured. This article provides an overview of the scope of this task.