Josephine Clark-Curtiss, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute has been exploring new lines of attack againstMycobacterium tuberculosis, causative agent of tuberculosis.
- Josephine Clark-Curtiss, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology. Photo by: The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University
Tuberculosis is an old foe. A 500,000-year-old human fossil discovered in Turkey bears telltale signs of the disease, which today continues to wreak havoc, killing an estimated 2 million per year, according to the World Health Organization.
Josephine Clark-Curtiss, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute has been exploring new lines of attack against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, causative agent of tuberculosis. In work carried out at the Institute’s Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, under the directorship of her husband, Roy Curtiss III, a new class of vaccine candidates is being investigated.
Recently, Clark-Curtiss and her colleagues have demonstrated the effectiveness of several recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccine (or RASV) strains in two studies appearing in the journal Infection and Immunity. The team’s results underline the promise of new vaccines against the disease that provide better protection than immunization with Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin BCG – the currently available vaccine – along with improved practicality, flexibility of use, and importantly, cost.
Read more at ASU News