Yonsei University Professor Shin Sungjae's Team Develops New Tuberculosis Vaccine and Treatment Platform

Discovery of Antigens,
Delivery to T Cells,
and Induction of Immune Response

A new strategy has been developed to prevent and treat tuberculosis using antigen-presenting cells.

On August 21, a research team led by Professor Shin Sungjae and Dr. Kim Hongmin from the Department of Microbiology at Yonsei University College of Medicine, in collaboration with Professor Kim Jongseok from Konyang University College of Medicine, announced that they have found a way to enhance the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis by utilizing dendritic cells, a type of antigen-presenting cell.

Photo by Yonsei Medical Center

The results of this study were published in the international journal 'Journal of Advanced Research' (IF 13.0).

Tuberculosis is one of the three major infectious diseases designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is the deadliest infectious disease in human history. It is estimated that about 25% of the world’s population, or over 2 billion people, are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Currently, the only vaccine for tuberculosis is the BCG vaccine. While the BCG vaccine is effective in preventing severe forms of extrapulmonary tuberculosis such as disseminated tuberculosis and tuberculous meningitis in children, its effectiveness against the most common form-pulmonary tuberculosis in adolescents and adults-is very limited. Recently, the rise of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis strains has made treatment increasingly difficult. This underscores the need for new vaccines and therapeutics to eradicate tuberculosis.

The research team identified a strategy to enhance the efficacy of tuberculosis vaccines and therapeutics by utilizing dendritic cells, which are antigen-presenting cells that induce immune responses. Dendritic cells are the first to detect and process antigens such as bacteria or viruses that invade the body, and then deliver antigen information to T cells to initiate an immune response.

First, dendritic cells activated with antigen components extracted from Mycobacterium tuberculosis were injected into mice that had been immunized with the BCG vaccine. In less than a week after tuberculosis infection, T cells recognizing the tuberculosis bacteria rapidly increased in the lung tissue of the mice. After 10 weeks of infection, the group that received both BCG and dendritic cells showed more than 90% inhibition of bacterial growth compared to the group that received only BCG. Notably, there was an increase in T cells capable of simultaneously producing the cytokines IFN-gamma, IL-2, and TNF-alpha, which are crucial for controlling tuberculosis. There was also a significant increase in tissue-resident memory T cells, which persist in the body for long periods. While the efficacy of the BCG vaccine alone declined over time in mice, the group that received both the vaccine and dendritic cells maintained vaccine efficacy for more than 30 weeks.

The effect of antibiotic treatment was also superior in the group of mice that received dendritic cells compared to the group that received antibiotics alone. The group treated with dendritic cells showed more than a 90% reduction in tuberculosis bacteria compared to the antibiotics-only group and demonstrated excellent efficacy in suppressing the activation of latent tuberculosis and controlling multidrug-resistant tuberculosis strains.

Professor Shin Sungjae stated, "This study is significant not only because it enhances vaccine efficacy, but also because it presents a principle for next-generation tuberculosis control strategies that can be applied throughout the entire pathogenesis of tuberculosis. To control chronic and complex infectious diseases like tuberculosis, an integrated vaccine and immunotherapy approach that bridges prevention and treatment is necessary, and dendritic cell-based technology is a highly promising platform to achieve this."

Meanwhile, this research was supported by the Mid-Career Researcher Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Vaccine Practical Technology Development Project of the Korea Health Industry Development Institute.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.