1^ST December 2023, Beijing

30^th November 2023, hosted by Beijing Chest Hospital, the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Tuberculosis Research and Training (WHOCC), Clinical Center on Tuberculosis, China Center of Disease Prevention and Control (CCTB), Innovation Alliance (IATB) with Shangdong Lukang Orion Quratis Bio Tech providing technical assistance, the second Sino-Korea symposium on TB has been successfully held online. The theme of this symposium is “Realizing the END-TB targets by accelerating the R&D of novel TB vaccines”. The first symposium addressed the issues around treatment of MDR-TB, this time the symposium focused on TB prophylaxis.

In opening, Prof. Liang Li of Beijing Chest Hospital, and Prof. Sang Nae Cho of Yonsei University Medical School pointed out that realizing the END-TB targets is a common aspiration of both China and Korea; to achieve this, we need newer, fastermore accurate and effective diagnostic, therapeutic as well as prophylactic tools. Recently, there has been some important development made by both countries in TB diagnostics and vaccines with the latter being an area of special interest and obstacle around the world. Hopefully, this online symposium can help us bridging our respective expertise for some of the challenges encountered during R&D and most of all knowledge sharing.

During the former presentation, Prof. Yu Pang of Beijing Chest Hospital’s microbiology & immunology lab, Dr. You Suk Suh, CEO of SL POGEN biotech, Prof. Bingdong Zhu of Lanzhou University and Dr. Jinhee Lee of Quratis BioTech spoke on the following topics, namely R&D progress and advantages of hybrid membrane-coated nanoparticles for TB vaccines, subunit TB vaccine and immune memory study, preclinical study of an adjuvant multi antigen DNA TB therapeutic vaccine, research progress of a self-amplifying mRNA TB vaccine. Followed by a Q&A session, where issues relating to and beyond the talks were discussed thoroughly.

In closing, Prof. Xiaobei Li of Beijing Chest Hospital stressed the importance of carrying on the research collaboration between China and Korea in TB. It’s a common public health peril, therefore, we need to address this peril shoulder to shoulder.

Report by Zi Chen, Innovation Alliance