The need for interconnected global biorepositories from tuberculosis studies to address fundamental questions at scale

Tuberculosis remains a leading cause of death, underscoring the urgent need for a new vaccine. Progress in vaccine development is hampered by incomplete understanding of how Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes infection and disease, and of protective immunity following natural infection and vaccination. Addressing these gaps requires biological samples from tuberculosis cases and contacts or healthy controls as well as from protected and unprotected vaccinated individuals. Numerous observational studies and clinical trials on tuberculosis are conducted each year, collecting and storing diverse samples-including blood derivatives, urine, sputum, saliva, and even radiographic images-from participants. In this Personal View, we suggest that pooling samples from these studies could enable the scientific community to address important and understudied research questions at an unprecedented scale. This approach could generate new insights into fundamental disease mechanisms and the requirements for an effective vaccine. We propose linking existing biorepositories from tuberculosis studies worldwide to facilitate large-scale studies and accelerate breakthroughs in tuberculosis vaccine development.