Vaccine nixes need for needles

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A UNM professor is developing a more effective and safe way to treat and prevent tuberculosis.

Pavan Muttil, an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy, received a $100,000 grant to develop a TB vaccine that will be given to patients through an inhaler rather than an injection. The vaccine will therefore attack the virus more directly and prevent diseases transmitted through injections, Muttil said.

Grand Challenges Explorations, a global organization that encourages health research, awarded him the grant. He said that because TB is an infection transmitted through the air that attacks the lungs, an inhaled TB vaccine will be more effective than an injection because the drug can directly treat the respiratory system, instead of first going through the blood.

“We want to create a vaccine which follows the same path as the bacteria,” he said. “The current vaccine is taken as an injection, so there is a disconnection in the sense that the disease actually starts from the lungs, but you’re trying to get a vaccine into the blood through an injection.”

Muttil said that unlike the U.S., some poorer countries don’t have safe needle disposal practices, which creates a higher risk for the spread of diseases.

The inhaled TB vaccine would therefore be especially beneficial in those countries by eliminating the risk of transmitting diseases such as HIV, hepatitis and malaria.

“A country like the U.S. can easily dispose of needles, but there are poor countries that don’t have a proper way to do it and people get multiple infections,” he said.

According to the University of Illinois Health Center, TB is an easily transmitted infection that primarily involves the lungs but later can spread to other parts of the body including the brain, kidneys and bones.

According to the World Health Organization, TB is a common disease in crowded or unsanitary countries and in 2010, the countries with highest rates of TB were India, China, South Africa, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Muttil, who was born in India, said that living in a country with high rates of TB inspired his research.

“India has a very high rate of TB, so that was a very strong reason to work on this,” he said. “Being in that country and studying a post-doctorate research in aerosol drugs really excited me.”