A nonhuman primate model for preclinical testing of new tuberculosis vaccines

Nonhuman primates appear to have significant advantages over conventional laboratory animals in terms of modeling pulmonary tuberculosis for purposes of vaccine evaluation. Primates are quite susceptible to infection by the aerosol route, develop a humanlike disease, exhibit antigen-induced T lymphocyte reactivity both in vitro and in vivo, and can be protected quite effectively by bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccination. There are fewer than a dozen published studies of experimental tuberculosis in primates, and all of the available data on the response of primates to vaccination have been generated in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). There have been no modern immunologic studies of primate tuberculosis. Thus, responses to tuberculosis vaccines in primates are only minimally characterized, and much additional baseline work remains to be done before the responses to new vaccines can be placed in the proper biological context.