Integrating knowledge of Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis for the design of better vaccines

Today, tuberculosis (TB) still remains one of the main global causes of mortality and morbidity, and an effective vaccine against both TB disease and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection is essential to reach the updated post-2015 Millennium development goal of eradicating TB by 2050. During the last two decades much knowledge has accumulated on the pathogenesis of TB and the immune responses to infection by M. tuberculosis. Furthermore, many vaccine candidates are under development, and close to 20 of them have entered clinical assessment at various levels. Nevertheless, the M. tuberculosis-host interaction is very complex, and the full complexity of this interaction is still not sufficiently well understood to develop novel, rationally designed vaccines. However, some of the recent knowledge is now integrated into the design of various types of vaccine candidates to be used either as pre-exposure, as post-exposure or as therapeutic vaccines, as will be discussed in this paper.