The Sabin Vaccine Institute announced the start of a Phase 1 clinical trial of its Na-GST-1 antigen, a candidate for the first human hookworm vaccine. The trial is described as a major milestone for the vaccine product development partnership (PDP) headquartered at Sabin. This trial advances Sabin’s goal “to develop a safe, efficacious and low-cost vaccine to reduce the global burden of human hookworm, which infects nearly 600 million people worldwide.” The trial is being conducted in Brazil, where the burden of human hookworm infection is high in endemic areas. Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, commented, “This vaccine trial is monumental, not just for us, but also for the children living in poverty who bear the burden of hookworm infection. After more than 10 years of research and development work and with the help of Sabin’s PDP partners, especially our partners in Brazil, we are about to show that it’s possible to produce a vaccine candidate using a relatively low-cost model. We are filling a gap to produce a vaccine for underrepresented populations, where no traditional commercial market currently exists.”

http://www.sabin.org/news-resources/releases/2012/01/19/candidate-first-human-hookworm-vaccine-enters-phase-1-clinical-tr