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US to test BCG vaccine against COVID-19

05 May 2020 | News

BCG could be widely available for use against COVID-19 in just six months

Image credit- shutterstock.com

Image credit- shutterstock.com

Texas A&M University researchers are asking hundreds of frontline medical workers to participate in a late-stage, phase 4, clinical trial of a widely used tuberculosis vaccine that could blunt the devastating effects of COVID-19.

Texas A&M is the lead entity in a world-class group of institutions seeking to repurpose the vaccine, BCG, which also is used to treat bladder cancer in the U.S. BCG could be widely available for use against COVID-19 in just six months because it has already been proven safe for other uses.

The Texas A&M Health Science Center is leading a group of scientists and medical doctors with Harvard’s School of Public Health, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Researchers hope to demonstrate that the BCG mitigates the effects of the virus, allowing fewer people to be hospitalized or to die from COVID-19.

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