Mega Doctor News
EDINBURG, TX — Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc. has awarded a subcontract to the Research Institute at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance to facilitate a Zika vaccine trial in Edinburg, Texas.
Leidos Biomed, which operates the Frederick National Laboratory in Frederick, Md., manages a number of Zika response efforts funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Research Institute at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance Health System (DHR) is recruiting healthy people between the ages of 15 and 35 years to participate in a clinical trial in which they might receive an experimental vaccine against the Zika Virus. This research is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) based in Bethesda, Maryland. The Zika vaccine does not contain live or inactivated Zika virus therefore does not contain infectious material and cannot cause Zika infection. Initial findings indicate the vaccine is safe and able to induce a neutralizing antibody response against the Zika virus. A key goal of the trial at DHR is to determine if the vaccine can effectively prevent disease caused by Zika infection.
A Zika vaccine is urgently needed to prevent the often-devastating birth defects that can result from Zika virus infection during pregnancy. It could also prevent symptoms of the disease such as: low fever with rash, pain in the joints or conjunctivitis. The infection is spread through the Aedes aegypti mosquito, or through sexual contact. There are no specific treatments or vaccines against Zika virus. From 2007 to 2016, the virus spread to the east, across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas, which led to the Zika virus epidemic 2015-16.
The Research Institute at Renaissance is made up of a group of professionals of excellent academic level and vast experience in research studies under the direction of Lisa Treviño, PhD and other physicians at DHR.
