With the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine losing efficacy against the deadly tuberculosis, Indian scientists now plan to give it a genetic boost by transferring some genes from a soil-living bacterium.
Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its ancestor, Mycobacterium indicus pranii that feeds on decaying material, will help scientists tame extra drug resistant TB. MIP, whose genome was sequenced recently, is seen as a potential harmless bacterium whose genes can be transferred to BCG strain to deal a deadly blow to tuberculosis, on one hand and leprosy on the other. “Several new antigenic proteins that we identified in MIP are incidentally absent from vaccine strain BCG but present in both Mycobacterium leprae (leprosy germ) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. An exciting idea would be to transfer these genes to BCG by using biotechnology and to test the resulting vaccine strain against both TB and leprosy. If it works, that will be a massive plus for public health and disease control in India,” said Prof. Anil K. Tyagi of the department of biochemistry, University of Delhi South Campus.
Prof. Tyagi and other Indian scientists studied MIP in detail for the first time. They found many vital biological clues that can be used to tame tuberculosis and leprosy, even through a single vaccine. “The information gained by our work will thus be used to develop new and effective treatment involving MIP,” said Prof. Tyagi.