On Apr. 29, 2020, a team of Texas A&M University researchers asked 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.

BCG, which also is used to treat bladder cancer in the U.S. and could be widely available for use against COVID-19 in just six months because it has already been proven safe for other uses.Recruitment of 1,800 volunteers to participate in the trial began in College Station and Houston, and it could be expanded to other areas of the state, as well as Los Angeles and Boston.

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 Houson, 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.

Cirillo said repurposing the existing bladder cancer vaccine, called TICE^® BCG, could result in bringing a COVID-19 treatment to the U.S. public in the fastest possible way. Because the drug is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Cirillo can skip the first three phases of clinical trials usually required before testing on people, since this vaccine has already passed those phases.

As the coronavirus spread, researchers noticed that the morbidity and mortality rates were lower in some developing countries where the BCG vaccine is widely used.