Since its discovery in the 1950s, millions of people worldwide have benefited from the tuberculosis vaccine Tice™ BCG (a bacterial preparation of a strain called Bacillus Calmette-Guerin). Today BCG is also used as a highly-effective treatment for bladder cancer and a preventative therapy for bladder tumors.
Tice™ BCG was developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Institute for Tuberculosis Research by its late director, Sol Roy Rosenthal. While Tice™ BCG is still used today against TB, the decline of TB cases in Pharmaceutical the U.S. allowed researchers at the UIC Institute to focus on other possibilities for the medicine. They were encouraged by research showing BCG to be an effective immune system stimulant and anti-cancer agent and began testing BCG’s cancer fighting components.
When injected, it is now an established treatment for bladder cancer and tumors and is a promising therapy for colon and lung cancer. Taken orally, tests show BCG could offer a nonsurgical treatment for breast and other hormone-dependent cancers.
In 1986, UIC licensed Tice™ BCG to Organon USA; the University receives royalties of more than $1 million per year. The UIC Institute continues to pursue the discovery of anti-tuberculosis agents and their applications for other infections.
This story was originally published in 2008.
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