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Immunol."],"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Introduction<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      Bacillus Calmette-Gue\u0301rin (BCG), the only licensed vaccine against\n                      <jats:italic>Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb)<\/jats:italic>\n                      infection, has been extensively used worldwide for over 100 years, but the epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) remains a major challenge to human health and well-being. The quest for a more effective vaccination strategy against the\n                      <jats:italic>Mtb<\/jats:italic>\n                      infection continues. Boosting the protective immunity induced by BCG with recombinant protein is a feasible approach to improve the efficacy of BCG, due to the proven safety and effectiveness of recombinant proteins as vaccination regimes against a variety of infectious diseases. While being shown to be promising in clinical trials in preventing\n                      <jats:italic>Mtb<\/jats:italic>\n                      infection, data suggest this strategy requires further improvement.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      In this study, we developed a novel fusion of proteins derived from major antigenic components of\n                      <jats:italic>Mtb<\/jats:italic>\n                      , including Ag85B, Rv2660c, and MPT70 (ARM), and assessed its antigenicity and ability to boost BCG efficacy in a murine model.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      The results demonstrated that the ARM immunization induced antigen-specific T and B cell responses and reduced the\n                      <jats:italic>Mtb<\/jats:italic>\n                      H37Ra burdens in the lungs and spleen. Mice that were primed with BCG and boosted with the ARM mounted a Th1-type immune response, characterized by an increased proportion of multi-functional ARM- and\n                      <jats:italic>Mtb<\/jats:italic>\n                      lysate-specific CD4+ T cells that produced IFN-\u03b3, TNF-\u03b1, and IL-2 compared to BCG alone, and reduced the\n                      <jats:italic>Mtb<\/jats:italic>\n                      burden without the development of severe lung pathological inflammation.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Discussion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The results of our study demonstrate that the ARM boost improves the quality of the BCG-induced immune response, increases its potency of pathogen reduction, and offers an additional option for enhancing the efficacy of BCG vaccination.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fimmu.2025.1430808","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,13]],"date-time":"2025-03-13T03:05:41Z","timestamp":1741835141000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":9,"title":["Recombinant protein Ag85B-Rv2660c-MPT70 promotes quality of BCG-induced immune response against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Jiangshan","family":"Ouyang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shaohua","family":"Guo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhiming","family":"Hu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ting","family":"Cao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jun","family":"Mou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xinxia","family":"Gu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chunxu","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jie","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e136222","DOI":"10.1172\/JCI136222","article-title":"The knowns and unknowns of latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection","volume":"131","author":"Boom","year":"2021","journal-title":"J Clin Invest"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/14760584.2019.1704263","article-title":"Can immunization with Bacillus Calmette-Gu\u00e9rin be improved for prevention or therapy and elimination of chronic","volume":"18","author":"Alvarez","year":"2019","journal-title":"Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection? 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