Chihuahuas develop a vaccine against rickettsia; in the preclinical stage

Video | Complete interview with Gerardo Espino, researcher at the UACH Faculty of Medicine.

In an interview for tiempo.com.mx y puentelibre.mxGerardo Pavel Espino, Doctor of Sciences and researcher SNI Phase I of Conahcyt from the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of the UACH, tells about the progress so far in the vaccine against rickettsiosis.

“We have to be versatile and attack problems in our community As researchers, we then want to influence global health. No. let’s go to our state, the problems that affect our people.”

Rickettsiosis is a death that takes lives every year in the state of Chihuahua and with particular concern in the capital, so that it has become one of the priorities of the health authorities.

With rickettsiosis “we came from difficult years, now we have fewer cases” thanks to the a distillery“attention to the dogs and a good eye doctors“.

With the development of the vaccine “we have exciting, very satisfying advances. “We have the prototype.”

“The Conahcyt project was completed, we were very good lucky of the Conahcyt project that helped us generate a prototype” of the vaccine.

“Neuterization experiments are still being done in animals, in mice. We need to some more funding and also BSL-3 safety equipment because there is rickettsiosis very dangerous“.

“For this we have other colleagues in Texas who are seeing if we can bring the project together and give it continuity. What we are doing while they are samples from patients, children with rickettsiosis. “We evaluate all of their immune systems through flow balance. “

“It’s like we grab a bag of M&M’s and separate the green ones, the red ones, the blue ones. “We don’t test them but we see what happens so we can help these patients and the doctors who care for them to give them better treatment.”

“We have colleagues at the Children’s Hospital, at Social Security, really cool doctors who help us a lot.”