The parasite is particularly dangerous to pregnant women. Yet despite the suffering it causes, hookworm is overlooked by researchers in the West and neglected by scientists in developing countries who don't have the resources to combat it. Sabin Institute Senior Research Fellow Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, a leading authority on the parasite, is heading up an initiative based at Washington, DC's George Washington University to halt this cycle of illness and poverty. The mission is to develop a vaccine against hookworm and get it to the people who need it. A vaccine, says Hotez, is the only logical solution.
Treatment is both expensive and ineffective-people are soon reinfected.
Worse, there's evidence that the disease is becoming drug resistant. The process of bringing a vaccine from development through testing and then into use is complex and laborious. Hotez had been working, with sporadic funding, for 10 years when the Gates Foundation came through. Stopping work like that is the death knell for research. But now, with a consistent financial source and outstanding work in the lab, Hotez anticipates starting clinical trials soon.