Though the connection seems unusual, this news could change the lives of more than 700,000 Americans living with this disease.
The TB Vaccine May Fight a Surprising Type of Cancer, Says New Research
Published on May 05, 2025
Around the world, over 100 million newborns receive a vaccine for tuberculosis each year. But while the vaccine is heavily administered in areas such as Latin America and East Asia, the United States does not do the same due to our country’s low tuberculosis rates.
However, the results of a recent study may have American health experts reconsidering their stance on the vaccine and rethinking who it’s given to—and it has nothing to do with tuberculosis.
Discover magazine reported that researchers from two research institutes in Barcelona, Spain, found that two doses of a tuberculosis (often referred to as simply TB) vaccine could help fight bladder cancer.
The researchers, who presented their findings in March at the 40th European Association of Urology Congress in Madrid, conducted a randomized controlled trial, giving a new vaccine—called the RUTI vaccine—to 20 of the study’s 40 participants. All of the study’s participants had “non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.”
There were no noted serious adverse reactions to the vaccine, though there were mild side effects at the injection site.
In the end, researchers discovered the vaccine boosted the immune response from Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) treatment, a common immunotherapy treatment for bladder cancer patients.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, BCG treatment was derived from a strain of a bacterium used for the tuberculosis vaccine. The immunotherapy treatment, however, involves injecting the BCG solution directly into the bladder. It’s typically given to people with early-stage bladder cancer and often after surgery (and is not a form of chemotherapy.)
After five years, all participants in the test group were tumor-free, announced the European Medical Journal. Meanwhile, only 13 individuals in the control group had the same results. This suggests that patients diagnosed with bladder cancer, particularly those with high-grade T1 tumors, could reduce their chances of the disease recurring.
“We expected that the RUTI vaccine would improve the immune response for patients, but we didn’t know what effect this might have on cancer progression over five years,” said lead researcher Dr. Cecilia Cabrera in a press release. “It was very surprising for us to see such a vast improvement in cancer progression even with such a small group of patients.”
The study is very good news, especially given that bladder cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the U.S., according to Medical News Today. The American Cancer Society suggests there could be nearly 85,000 new bladder cancer diagnoses in the U.S. in 2025 alone…and the organization estimates more than 17,000 people could die from it this year.
While more research into the RUTI vaccine’s effects is needed, it provides hope for better bladder cancer treatment outcomes in the future.
For daily wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
