Singapore, March 19 -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates MRI) has announced that a Phase 3 clinical trial to assess the efficacy of the M72/AS01E tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate is now underway, with first doses given in South Africa, where TB takes a heavy toll.

If shown to be well-tolerated and effective, M72/AS01E could potentially become the first vaccine to help prevent pulmonary TB in adolescents and adults, the most common form of the disease, and the first new TB vaccine in over a century.

The M72/AS01E vaccine candidate has been in development since the early 2000s. It was originally designed and clinically evaluated by the biopharma company GSK up to the proof-of-concept phase (Phase 2b), in partne...