New York City, Feb. 25 -- Working towards more effective tuberculosis (TB) vaccinations, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed two strains of mycobacteria with "kill switches" that may be activated to stop the bacteria after they elicit an immune response.

Two preclinical research addresses the difficulty of designing bacteria that are safe for use in controlled human infection trials or as improved vaccinations. While tuberculosis is under control in most developed nations, the illness still kills over a million people each year worldwide.

Spreading easily through the air, Mycobacterium tuberculosis can establish a chronic infection in human lungs, which can turn into a deadly respiratory disease. A safe vaccine called B...