New nose spray DNA vaccine to change the way tuberculosis is treated — Researchers

A new DNA vaccine delivered through a simple nose spray could give the immune system a powerful new weapon against tuberculosis (TB), helping eliminate bacteria that can hide from antibiotics and cause the disease to return.

Developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, the experimental vaccine targets dormant “persister” bacteria, which are hard-to-kill microbes that can survive months of treatment and trigger relapse.

In animal studies, the vaccine cleared TB bacteria more quickly, reduced lung inflammation, prevented relapse after treatment, and enhanced the effectiveness of drugs used to treat drug-resistant TB.

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The study’s lead author, Styliani Karanika, an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explained that the vaccine also helped the powerful TB drug combination work better, particularly in hard-to-treat cases.

Unlike conventional vaccines, the therapy is administered through the nose, allowing it to activate immune defenses directly in the lungs, where TB infection begins. It also generated strong, long-lasting T-cell responses, with protective immunity lasting at least six months in rhesus macaques.

Tuberculosis remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, infecting more than 10 million people and killing about 1.2 million people every year. Current treatment can take months, and drug-resistant TB continues to pose a major global health challenge.

WHO has emphasised the need for therapeutic vaccines that can complement existing drug treatments, especially as multidrug therapies can be difficult for patients to complete and drug-resistant forms of TB continue to spread.

While the vaccine still needs to undergo further testing before reaching human clinical trials, researchers believe it could become a powerful companion to existing TB drugs, potentially shortening treatment, preventing relapse, and improving outcomes for patients battling both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Although more studies are needed before the vaccine can be tested in people, the findings mark an important advance in the search for more effective, longer-lasting TB treatments.