TB subunit vaccines--putting the pieces together.

The search for a new and improved vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) is currently a very active field of research, which in the last 10 years has benefited tremendously from the completed Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome and the progress in molecular biology and computer science. In this review, we discuss how Genomics, Proteomics and Transcriptomics have accelerated the pace of antigen discovery and vaccine development and have changed this field completely, resulting in the identification of a large number of antigens with potential in TB vaccines. The next phase of this work has now started--putting the most relevant molecules back together as fusion molecules and cocktails. This requires carefully monitoring aspects as immunodominance, recognition in different populations as well as vaccine manufacturing.