The findings, which were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, say the vaccine is designed to help the immune system identify and attack drug-tolerant TB bacteria known as "persisters," which can survive lengthy antibiotic treatment and later trigger a relapse of the disease.

Tuberculosis has afflicted humans for at least 6,000 years and remains one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), roughly one-quarter of the global population, about 2 billion people, carry latent TB infections without symptoms. In 2024, more than 10 million people developed active TB, and 1.2 million died from the disease, making it the leading cause of death from a single infectious pathogen.

''Administered together with first-line TB drug therapy, our intranasal DNA fusion vaccine helped infected mice clear the disease bacteria faster, reduced lung inflammation and prevented relapse after treatment ended," says study lead author Styliani Karanika, M.D., a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Tuberculosis Research and assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"The vaccine also helped the powerful TB drug combination of bedaquiline, pretomanid and linezolid work better, suggesting it could be used with treatments against drug-resistant TB to help the body fight the disease, even hard-to-treat cases."

The researchers believe their results support a broader treatment strategy that focuses on eliminating TB persisters through immunotherapy rather than relying exclusively on antibiotics to kill actively growing bacteria.

Because DNA vaccines are generally stable and can be produced efficiently, the approach could offer practical advantages if future studies demonstrate similar benefits in humans.