Rational design of vaccines against tuberculosis directed by basic immunology

Tuberculosis represents a serious problem for public health worldwide, and effective vaccines are urgently required. This represents a significant challenge as the causative bacterial agent, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has developed strategies to persist in infected hosts despite the presence of potent T-cell-mediated immune responses. New advances in basic immunology are giving us improved understanding of what constitutes a protective immune response and ways this response is manipulated by the bacillus. Such insights should inform us how to design more effective vaccination strategies against intracellular pathogens. (C) 2007 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.