A bacteria is created to produce vaccine against tuberculosis

A modified bacterium, a relative of that causes tuberculosis (TB), has the potential to protect against infectious disease, say U.S. scientists.

As expressed by scientists Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, although the study is in its early stages, the finding could lead to a new vaccine against the disease.

The only shot that currently exists against tuberculosis-Bacillus Calmette-Guerin or BCG, is not very effective.
This has shown to have highly variable between 0 and 80% in different parts of the world.

TB is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, kills between 2 and 3 million people each year worldwide.
In recent years the disease problem has been worsened by the emergence of a strain highly resistant to available drugs.

New research published in Nature Medicine, analyzed a group of genes called ESX-3, which are variants that are found in all types of mycobacteria, including M. tuberculosis, and that help the organisms to evade the immune system.
M. tuberculosis can not survive without their esx-3 genes but one of his relatives, llamadaMycobacterium smegmatis, can.
In experiments with infected mice, the researchers removed the genes of the ESX-3 M. smegmatis and injected a dose that would have been lethal genes, in animals.
The results showed that in mice infected with the bacterium M.tuberculosis those who received no vaccine died within 54 days on average.

Those who were vaccinated with BCG lived about 65 days. But the mice immunized with Ikeplus survived 135 days.
However, in animals that survived longer than 200 days, scientists did not detect any trace of the lethal bacterium.
“Consistently we better protect the mice with BCG Ikeplus” explains Professor William Jacobs, who led the study.

The researcher cautioned, however, only 20% of the mice achieved long-term survival, so that the vaccine still needs to be perfected.
As stated by a spokesman for the TB Alert “These are interesting experiments but it is too early to tell what impact the development of a new safe and effective vaccine.”