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..

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 III 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 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.

2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

UPDATE 10:47 P.M. April 28, 2024
MISSOULA- MTN News received the following email.

“UMPD in partnership with Missoula law enforcement continue to search the campus but have not found anything or received information to substantiate a threat. University operations are returning to normal but we ask for your continued vigilance and that you report anything you see that appears suspicious to UMPD (x4000 or 406-243-4000). Officers will continue to patrol campus throughout the night. Thank you for your cooperation and have a good evening.”

MISSOULA- The University of Montana and the Missoula Police Department are investigating after two calls were placed to 911 threatening gun violence at the University.

Officials said they received the call around 9 p.m. on Sunday.

The University of Montana sent this email to family’s and students on Sunday night following the report:

“911 received an anonymous call of a person dressed in black threatening violence on campus (including the use of firearms). There has been no verification to this call however the University has gone to secure mode by locking all external buildings. Police are actively searching campus.

Anyone on campus should be vigilant and if you see anything suspicious to call University Police. Anyone attending the show at the Adams Center can exit orderly at end of show and there are police on scene .

If anyone has information or sees anything unfamiliar, please call Missoula 911, or University Police Emergency at 4000 (on campus), 406-243-4000 (off campus).”

There will continue to be a heavy police presence on campus tonight as campus remains in safety mode, meaning that if a student has a key to get into a door they will be allowed in but external doors will be locked, according to the UM Communications Director Dave Kuntz.

Kuntz told MTN that there is no indication that this is connected to the Protecting Freedom event that occurred earlier on Sunday.

Police are actively searching the campus for any indication of the threat. There is currently no evidence of a threat to the public.

MISSOULA, Mont. — Republican officials Rep. Ryan Zinke, Gov. Greg Gianforte and Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy joined Donald Trump Jr. at the Montana Association of Conservatives’ “Protecting Freedom Event” Sunday in an effort to rev up conservative voters for 2024.

“We need everyone out there for the governor, for Tim, for Ryan. but also guys go all the way down to dog catcher. Seriously, get involved, your school boards, your state reps, it all matters,” Trump Jr. said.

When not attacking the current administration over issues like foreign policy and the border, GOP officials took aim at incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.

Criticism of Tester ranged from personal insults to the senator’s voting record. Event headliners Trump Jr. and Alex Bruesewitz, who is the CEO of a pro-Trump media agency, both mocked Tester’s weight. Bruesewitz was one of several speakers who painted Tester as “far left.”

“I don’t think this is a far left state, is it?” Bruesewitz, the CEO of X Strategies LLC asked the crowd. “So tell me why do you guys keep sending Jon Tester back?”

Ukraine’s war against Russia was another topic many conservatives addressed. Zinke defended his recent no-votes on a bipartisan funding effort supporting Ukraine and Israel, while Trump Jr. compared the money to a “slush fund.”

“Is Ukraine a top three issue for anyone in the room?” Trump asked. (Some in the audience yell no)“No? Not one? Oh that’s interesting. How about a top ten? (some attendees yell no again) That’s amazing.”

NBC Montana caught up with GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy after the event to ask him his stance on funding Ukraine following the 2022 Russian invasion.

The U.S. should “absolutely not” be sending money to support Ukraine right now, Sheehy said.

“I wish Ukraine the best. I hope they push Putin out. I hope they win, but ultimately we have to be focused on what’s right for America first and that’s a long way down the list right now,” Sheehy said.

Americans should be taken care of first, the likely GOP Senate nominees said, citing illegal border crossings and the tens of thousands of deaths from fentanyl overdoses.