Important milestone advances world’s first and only human hookworm vaccine development initiative

The Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) today announced that its product development partnership (Sabin PDP) successfully completed a Phase 1 clinical trial in Brazil of Na-GST-1/Alhydrogel®, a vaccine candidate for human hookworm, one of the most pervasive neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affecting the world’s poor. The Sabin PDP is based at Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. The trial, which tested the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine, ran from January 2011 to August 2014 and enrolled 102 healthy adults in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Final study results are expected in December 2014. “It is promising that our hookworm vaccine candidate yielded positive safety and immunogenicity results in people living in such a high risk area,” said David Diemert, MD, principal investigator of the study, director of clinical trials of the Sabin PDP and associate professor at The George Washington University....