Bill Gates: We’re making progress with TB vaccine… it could have 70% efficacy

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says progress has been made with the clinical trial of the M72 tuberculosis (TB) vaccine.

Gates spoke in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of the 2024 NutriVision, a pan-African dialogue to discuss transformative solutions to combatting malnutrition and shaping Africa’s future.

The M72/AS01E vaccine candidate was developed by GlaxoSmithKline in partnership with AERAS, a not-for-profit organisation based in the US.

The research is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s medical research institute (Gates MRI).

On March 19, the foundation announced a phase 3 clinical trial to assess the efficacy of the M72/AS01E tuberculosis vaccine.

It said the vaccine, if shown to be well-tolerated and effective, could potentially become the first new TB vaccine in over a century to help prevent pulmonary TB in adolescents and adults.

Speaking during the interview, Gates said while there is a possibility that the vaccine would not work, he is hopeful that it would reach 70 percent efficacy.

“The current drugs, sadly, have to be taken for nine months. And there’s some TB out there that is drug resistant, either single drug resistant or multi drug resistance,” he said.

“We’re making great progress on bringing new drugs in and also working on a vaccine.

“That vaccine trial is going to take like four years. We’re hoping that the vaccine will show like the 70 percent reduction. We don’t think it’s likely to show a 90 percent reduction. It’s possible it won’t work. It’s a very expensive trial, about 500 million.

“The vaccine is risky, but we decided to, you know, go ahead and fund it, because there there are no good TB vaccines, and this one, at least at the trial level, looked like it might give us a 70 percent efficacy.”

‘IN AFRICA, WE SPEND THE MOST ON NIGERIA’ 

Gates said in Africa, Nigeria gets the lion’s share of the foundation’s funding because of the country’s population.

He said the foundation plans to spend more in future and would focus on improving primary healthcare.

“We spend a lot in Asia, but we spend even more in Africa. The country we spend the most in Africa is Nigeria,” he said.

“That makes sense because of the population and because of the incredible needs that are here.

“That means that I’ve literally spent billions in Nigeria. I feel glad that things like the child mortality rate have come down, but we could do a lot better.”