The current tuberculosis vaccine, BCG, has questionable efficacy and undoubtedly new vaccines are needed. Recent studies have indicated that DNA vaccines may be promising as new mycobacterial vaccines candidates. We are currently generating DNA vectors encoding these different mycobacterial antigens (ESAT6, KatG, and HBHA) for testing in animal models of tuberculosis. We are also developing cytokine assays to investigate whether cytokine responses are potential surrogates of DNA vaccine effectiveness.
