Humanitarian Effort to Eradicate Schistosomiasis Enters Important Stage
Texas Tech University Health Sciences CenterAfzal A. Siddiqui, Ph.D., director of the Center for Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease and chair of the Department of Immunology and Molecular Microbiology at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, began his quest to develop a schistosomiasis vaccine in 1991. With funding from the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Thrasher Foundation, he began conducting bench studies and pre-clinical development of what was known as the Sm-p80/GLA-SE schistosomiasis vaccine, which would eventually be branded SchistoShield®.