Anna Maria Barry-Jester recently explored why GlaxoSmithKline has delayed a tuberculosis vaccine, an important global public health project for ProPublica.

Back in 2018, research on a new tuberculosis vaccine was looking promising. In clinical studies, the shot had prevented more than half of the participants from getting sick.

The next step would have been for GSK to do a safety and efficacy trial, but the trial never happened, and the pharmaceutical company appeared to switch its focus to other initiatives instead.

Instead of further developing its vaccine for TB which kills 1.6 million, mostly poor, people each year, GSK chose to invest more in a shingles vaccine.

Shingles affects mostly older people who in the U.S. are for the most part covered by government insurance. The shingles vaccine has gone on to earn the company more than $14 billion.

GSK denies delaying the development of the TB vaccine. The pharmaceutical company has plans on beginning a clinical trial in 2024.

The company’s chief global health officer Dr. Thomas Breuer said it remains dedicated to researching diseases that afflict underserved communities around the world.

“Any suggestion that our commitment to continued investment in global health has reduced, is fundamentally untrue,” Breuer wrote in a statement.

TB experts like Thomas Scriba however are concerned that the development isn’t being made a priority.

Read more about GSK’s TB vaccine at Scroll.

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