Research Projects

One of the highest priorities of tuberculosis (TB) research is to develop vaccines that are more efficacious for preventing TB than Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette -Guérin (BCG), the only vaccine for more than 80 years available to (partially) protect against TB disease. However, the efficacy of BCG has been inconsistent. Glycoconjugate vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b and selected serogroups/types of Neisseria meningitidis and Streptococcus pneumoniae have been licensed and strategies for their manufacturing, testing, and regulation have already established. Given the success of other glycoconjugate vaccines, we have concentrated our efforts on conjugating multiple peptide epitopes of mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins such as LpqH (19 kDa mycobacterial lipoprotein, Rv3763), Mycobacterium cell entry-1 protein (Rv0169), RV3659CType IV piliand HBHA (Rv0475) with homologous carbohydrate antigen i.e Mycolic acid of TB. The aim of study is to generate immune response against protein antigen as well as T cell independent carbohydrate antigen so that carbohydrate as well as protein antigen specific antibodies could work co-operatively and hence better protection can be achieved as compared to BCG vaccine against TB