[thedoc (OP)]

A new study has shown that a breakthrough vaccine against tuberculosis may be more effective when given alone, rather than alongside other vaccines.


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[CliffordK]

Most interesting. 

Is this one of the first times that a live viral vaccine has been genetically modified to fight a bacterial disease?

If effective, I could see it opening new avenues of research, perhaps into Malaria vaccines, or AIDS vaccines.

Does the effectiveness of this TB vaccine depend on whether or not a person has previously received the smallpox vaccine?  Since most smallpox vaccines have been stopped years ago, perhaps those individuals aren't a big problem now, but it could limit using the same virus vector to deliver multiple different vaccines in the future.

As noted in the interview.

Will: -   Yeah and one of the main reasons why they're given at once is purely practical, just because it’s very difficult to get people from remote rural communities and many of these countries in the developing world into the clinics to receive the vaccines and so, it would be much better if you could do it all in one go.

It is possible to have very complex vaccine regimens in the USA and Europe, but it is far more difficult to give children in the 3^rd world repeated doses of vaccine, which is one of the reasons why they often don't use 3 doses of IPV followed by one dose of OPV even though the more complex regimen is safer.

Perhaps another avenue of research would be to modify something like the varicella virus/vaccine to generate immunity for varicella PLUS something else.