There are promising innovations in the fight against tuberculosis but a lack of funding could delay the trials for more than a century, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates says
A lack of funding could delay late-stage trials of the first new vaccine against tuberculosis for more than a century, Bill Gates has warned, whose foundation is backing the development of the shot.
The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist said there were a raft of promising innovations in the fight against TB, the world’s biggest infectious disease killer, but that more funding was essential. "The failure to fund these things… like we can’t go full speed ahead on these vaccine trials - that’s a huge mistake," he said on Monday.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest funder of the battle against TB, he said, and the work on the M72/AS01 vaccine, originally developed by GSK and the Gates-backed non-profit Aeras, is now being led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute. Gates said a plan for phase III trials for the vaccine would likely be announced later this year. But he called on governments and other philanthropists to step up to help fund the trials, as well as other TB innovations."So even though we'll be a big funder of that, we also need partners to come in and do that with us," he said, adding that vaccine development has a high risk of failure so needs real commitment from funders.