NIH pre-clinical screening program: overview and current status.

The increase in the number of cases of Mycobacterium tuberculosis around the world has lead to a greater need for a more efficacious vaccine than the currently used M. bovis BCG. Despite the relative success of this attenuated vaccine there are multiple examples where alternative strategies are desperately needed. In 1996, the National Institutes of Health published a request calling for applications to test newly developed vaccines against tuberculosis. The current screening program at Colorado State University has tested a wide range of novel vaccine candidates.