Montana

Path to a better TB vaccine runs through Montana

Published

2 years ago

April 22, 2024

Path to a better TB vaccine runs through Montana

Jim Robbins

(KFF) A team of Montana researchers is playing a key role in the development of a more effective vaccine against tuberculosis, an infectious disease that has killed more people than any other.

The BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine, created in 1921, remains the sole TB vaccine. While it is 40% to 80% effective in young children, its efficacy is very low in adolescents and adults, leading to a worldwide push to create a more powerful vaccine.

One effort is underway at the University of Montana Center for Translational Medicine. The center specializes in improving and creating vaccines by adding what are called novel adjuvants. An adjuvant is a substance included in the vaccine, such as fat molecules or aluminum salts, that enhances the immune response, and novel adjuvants are those that have not yet been used in humans. Scientists are finding that adjuvants make for stronger, more precise, and more durable immunity than antigens, which create antibodies, would alone.

Eliciting specific responses from the immune system and deepening and broadening the response with adjuvants is known as precision vaccination. “It’s not one-size-fits-all,” said Ofer Levy, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard University and the head of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “A vaccine might work differently in a newborn versus an older adult and a middle-aged person.”

The ultimate precision vaccine, said Levy, would be lifelong protection from a disease with one jab. “A single-shot protection against influenza or a single-shot protection against covid, that would be the holy grail,” Levy said.

Jay Evans, the director of the University of Montana center and the chief scientific and strategy officer and a co-founder of Inimmune, a privately held biotechnology company in Missoula, said his team has been working on a TB vaccine for 15 years. The private-public partnership is developing vaccines and trying to improve existing vaccines, and he said it’s still five years off before the TB vaccine might be distributed widely.

It has not gone unnoticed at the center that this state-of-the-art vaccine research and production is located in a state that passed one of the nation’s most extreme anti-vaccination laws during the pandemic in 2021. The law prohibits businesses and governments from discriminating against people who aren’t vaccinated against covid-19 or other diseases, effectively banning both public and private employers from requiring workers to get vaccinated against covid or any other disease. A federal judge later ruled that the law cannot be enforced in health care settings, such as hospitals and doctors’ offices.

In mid-March, the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute announced it had begun the third and final phase of clinical trials for the new vaccine in seven countries. The trials should take about five years to complete. Research and production are being done in several places, including at a manufacturing facility in Hamilton owned by GSK, a giant pharmaceutical company.

Known as the forgotten pandemic, TB kills up to 1.6 million people a year, mostly in impoverished areas in Asia and Africa, despite its being both preventable and treatable. The U.S. has seen an increase in tuberculosis over the past decade, especially with the influx of migrants, and the number of cases rose by 16% from 2022 to 2023. Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV, whose risk of contracting a TB infection is 20 times as great as people without HIV.

“TB is a complex pathogen that has been with human beings for ages,” said Alemnew Dagnew, who heads the program for the new vaccine for the Gates Medical Research Institute. “Because it has been with human beings for many years, it has evolved and has a mechanism to escape the immune system. And the immunology of TB is not fully understood.”

The University of Montana Center for Translational Medicine and Inimmune together have 80 employees who specialize in researching a range of adjuvants to understand the specifics of immune responses to different substances. “You have to tailor it like tools in a toolbox towards the pathogen you are vaccinating against,” Evans said. “We have a whole library of adjuvant molecules and formulations.”

Vaccines are made more precise largely by using adjuvants. There are three basic types of natural adjuvants: aluminum salts; squalene, which is made from shark liver; and some kinds of saponins, which are fat molecules. It’s not fully understood how they stimulate the immune system. The center in Missoula has also created and patented a synthetic adjuvant, UM-1098, that drives a specific type of immune response and will be added to new vaccines.

One of the most promising molecules being used to juice up the immune system response to vaccines is a saponin molecule from the bark of the quillay tree, gathered in Chile from trees at least 10 years old. Such molecules were used by Novavax in its covid vaccine and by GSK in its widely used shingles vaccine, Shingrix. These molecules are also a key component in the new tuberculosis vaccine, known as the M72 vaccine.

But there is room for improvement.

“The vaccine shows 50% efficacy, which doesn’t sound like much, but basically there is no effective vaccine currently, so 50% is better than what’s out there,” Evans said. “We’re looking to take what we learned from that vaccine development with additional adjuvants to try and make it even better and move 50% to 80% or more.”

By contrast, measles vaccines are 95% effective.

According to Medscape, around 15 vaccine candidates are being developed to replace the BCG vaccine, and three of them are in phase 3 clinical trials.

One approach Evans’ center is researching to improve the new vaccine’s efficacy is taking a piece of the bacterium that causes TB, synthesizing it, and combining it with the adjuvant QS-21, made from the quillay tree. “It stimulates the immune system in a way that is specific to TB and it drives an immune response that is even closer to what we get from natural infections,” Evans said.

The University of Montana center is researching the treatment of several problems not commonly thought of as treatable with vaccines. They are entering the first phase of clinical trials for a vaccine for allergies, for instance, and first-phase trials for a cancer vaccine. And later this year, clinical trials will begin for vaccines to block the effects of opioids like heroin and fentanyl. The University of Montana received the largest grant in its history, $33 million, for anti-opioid vaccine research. It works by creating an antibody that binds with the drug in the bloodstream, which keeps it from entering the brain and creating the high.

For now, though, the eyes of health care experts around the world are on the trials for the new TB vaccines, which, if they are successful, could help save countless lives in the world’s poorest places.

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Montana

Missoula and Western Montana neighbors: Obituaries for March 20

Published

4 hours ago

March 20, 2026

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Missoula and Western Montana neighbors: Obituaries for March 20

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Montana smokejumper Sam Forstag aims to flip House seat blue

Published

16 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Press Room

Montana smokejumper Sam Forstag aims to flip House seat blue

Montana hasn’t elected a Democrat to the House since the late 1990s. Smokejumper Sam Forstag, who jumps out of planes into the remote wilderness to put out wildfires, is trying to change that. Forstag joins “The Takeout” to lay out his progressive campaign in the deep-red state.

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Amazing America: Smokejumpers share how job evolved through the years

Published

1 day ago

March 19, 2026

Press Room

Amazing America: Smokejumpers share how job evolved through the years

MISSOULA, Mont. — In this week’s Amazing America, NBC Montana is highlighting smokejumpers and their efforts to keep our communities safe during wildfire season.

NBC Montana caught up with a current and a former smokejumper to learn more about the work they do and how the job has changed throughout the years.

Jim Kitchen was a smokejumper for 20 seasons, fought over 100 fires and raised his three daughters on a smokejumper base, where he served as base commander.

Kitchen says he’ll never forget his first jump, when he started training in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1987.

“I went, ‘That was amazing,’ and he goes, ‘Yeah,’ and I go, ‘Have you ever done anything as amazing in your life? I mean, we just made our first jump,” said Kitchen.

Kitchen told NBC Montana when he laughed his crew had to do 50 pushups.

Kitchen saw several changes during his career, including women entering a historically male-dominated field. He told NBC Montana Deanne Shulman, the first woman smokejumper, paved the way for the industry.

He recalled a time when he was on a trip to Washington, D.C. , in the early ’90s to coordinate emergency response, when a U.S. Department of State official asked him a question.

“He goes, ‘I didn’t realize men were smokejumpers.’ And I had to go, ‘Peter, I’ll have you know, there’s quite a few of us, and actually, it’s the women that are rare,’” said Kitchen “The early ladies in smokejumping, they always met and exceeded the bar, and they were instrumental in doing these winter details.”

Another change he oversaw as base commander, was moving from round parachutes used in World War II, to the ones used today.

“Ram-Air parachutes that inflate make the shape of the wing and they actually have about a 20 mph forward speed. And so you can you can fly those in much windier conditions, higher elevations,” said Kitchen.

Kitchen says the job requires you to roll with the punches and make quick decisions on the fly.

He said while training new jumpers, he taught them early to prepare and never hesitate.

“The only thing that we ask of you is that you take all the information that you can and then make a decision,” said Kitchen.

Nick Holloway, a current Missoula smokejumper, who’s been working for 14 seasons, says it’s important to rely on your training, stay positive and persevere.

“Having done this for a few years, it’s just trying to know that essentially every season is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. Just stay healthy, stay focused and keep having a good time,” said Holloway.

NBC Montana asked both men what they were most proud of during their time jumping.

Kitchen recalled fighting a fire near the Grand Canyon, when he and his crew decided to manage a fire instead of suppressing it when they ponderosa pine trees.

The crew let the fire burn to a plateau, “The Ponderosa pine has about a 20 to 30-year fire return interval in that area,” said Kitchen. “That’s one of the high points as far as land stewardship of my career is seeing fire on a landscape escape and not necessarily suppressing it but allowing it to burn, because then you’re saying it’s good for decades after that.”

Holloway told NBC Montana, while he has “too many to count,” he’s most proud that recently he jumped a 3- to 5-acre fire at Yellowstone National Park.

The fire grew to 8 acres, “So seven days later we got around everything, put it all out and essentially with a good product upon departure. So it’s just a classic example of a smokejumper fire.”

Holloway says staying fit for annual trainings, regardless of experience, is critical to staying fire-ready.

“Pushups, pullups, sit-ups, a certain amount and then a mile and a half in a certain time as well,” said Holloway.

Kitchen told NBC Montana he still does his pullups, pushups and sit-ups.

“Many of my colleagues are still in really fit shape even in their 60s, 70s and 80s,” he said.

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