Crucell, AERAS, and SATVI Announce TB Vaccine Clinical Trial

Dutch biotechnology company Crucell N.V. (Leiden, the Netherlands, www.crucell.com), the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation (Rockville, MD, www.aeras.org) and the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI, Cape Town, South Africa, www.satvi.uct.ac.za) at the University of Cape Town, recently announced the launch of a new Phase 1 clinical trial of the AdVac-based tuberculosis vaccine, six months after launching a similar study in the US. The trial will be conducted in the Boland-Overberg region of Western Cape Province in South Africa, which has one of the world’s highest TB burdens. Aeras and Crucell began jointly developing this vaccine candidate, called AERAS-402, in 2004 using Crucell’s AdVac vaccine technology and PER.C6 manufacturing technology.