Vaccination News

Early tests set the stage for health workers to administer the vaccine as an aerosol instead of an injection.

A new powdered form of BCG, the tuberculosis vaccine, mixes a mycobacterium [green] with leucine [gray] and may pave the way for more powerful, needle-free forms of the vaccine.

A new powdered form of tuberculosis (TB) vaccine may help save some of the nearly two million lives lost to the disease annually. In preliminary tests, the powdered form contained more active bacterial cells than a freeze-dried version similar to the existing vaccine. The result may pave the way for health workers to administer the vaccine as an aerosol to the lungs instead of as an injection, possibly leading to a more effective treatment.