High­ly-await­ed PhI­II study of Gates-backed tu­ber­cu­lo­sis vac­cine un­der­way

A large study of an ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cine for the world’s biggest in­fec­tious dis­ease has fi­nal­ly kicked off in South Africa.

The Bill & Melin­da Gates Med­ical Re­search In­sti­tute (MRI) will test a tu­ber­cu­lo­sis vac­cine’s abil­i­ty to pre­vent la­tent in­fec­tions from caus­ing po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly lung dis­ease. Last sum­mer Well­come said it would chip in $150 mil­lion for the study and the Gates Foun­da­tion said it would foot the re­main­ing $400 mil­lion of the es­ti­mat­ed $550 mil­lion cost of run­ning the 20,000-per­son Phase III tri­al.

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