From CBS Austin
June 4, 2019
SAN ANTONIO — Researchers at Texas Biomed say they are working on an effective vaccine to protect pregnant women against the Zika virus.
The Department of Defense awarded the Texas Biomedical Research Institute $2 million to study what the facility calls a “promising experimental Zika vaccine.”
“If there’s something we can do to intervene for a pregnant woman and her fetus who are at risk, it’s certainly something we want to be looking at. I think most of the work being done now is focused on how we intervene during pregnancy since that is where the risk is,” explained Professor Jean Patterson, Ph.D., a Principal Investigator (PI) on the study.
The Zika virus can be passed from a pregnant woman to her unborn fetus, which can lead to serious birth defects, the CDC states.