Roadmap for the development of candidate vaccine for bTB

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

The development of an effective subunit vaccine for use on its own or in combination with other bovine TB vaccines in a prime-boost combination.

What are the scientific and technological challenges
(knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

• Establishing the immune responses to the various subunits
• Challenge experiments involving animals vaccinated with subunit candidate vaccines that resulted in interesting immune responses.
• Establishing that there isn’t interference between the various antigens

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

• Identifying a combination of protective antigens for expression by a suitable expression vector
• The availability of suitable adjuvants to stimulate strong cell mediated immune responses
• Identifying expression systems that give correct Antigen conformation

Existing knowledge including successes and failures