Japan’s GHIT Funds Geisel Researchers’ Second TB Trial

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Read the full story by Susan Green, published by the Geisel School of Medicine.

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A view of Hanover from the green
(Photo by Eli Burakian ’00)

A collaborative of the Geisel School of Medicine, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania, and Tokyo Medical and Dental University received $1.4 million from Japan’s Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT) to conduct a joint randomized clinical trial in Tanzania aimed at reducing the transmission of tuberculosis (TB). The trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of DAR-901, a booster TB vaccine, in adolescents.

“We’ve been working on this since the 1990s, and DAR-901 remains the only new vaccine for TB in development that has shown to be effective in humans,” says Ford von Reyn, a professor of medicine at Geisel who led the development of the vaccine. “We are very enthusiastic about moving forward with DAR-901 because the World Health Organization has set a target date of 2035 for global elimination of TB, and modeling indicates that will be possible only if there is a new and better TB vaccine—so we are fortunate to be working on this.”

Modeled after and run in coordination with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenge initiative, GHIT’s Grand Challenges Targeted Research Platform initiative funds early-phase research and development approaches to fighting infectious disease.

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