Sabin Vaccine Development is focused on the development of sustainable and cost-effective vaccines for preventing diseases caused by two widespread neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), hookworm and schistosomiasis.

The Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative (HHVI) is the world's first-ever vaccine initiative targeting human hookworm infection which would alleviate the suffering of more than a half-billion infected people. The Schistosomiasis Vaccine Initiative (SVI) was launched in 2008 to develop a vaccine for schistosomiasis, which infects over 200 million people around the world and is the deadliest disease of the seven most prevalent NTDs, killing an estimated 280,000 people annually. In the past, Sabin Vaccine Development also formed a research collaboration with PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to aid in the development of a transmission-blocking malaria vaccine antigen through the Malaria Vaccine Program (MVP).

With ten years of experience, Sabin Vaccine Development has produced a well-rounded model that serves as a blueprint for the development of safe and effective vaccines against vaccine preventable and neglected tropical diseases. Existing capabilities include:

Product Development: Established the infrastructure to engage in antigen discovery, rapid development of scalable manufacturing processes (process development), quality control, preclinical and clinical immunology and stability testing.

Technology Transfer and Manufacturing: Work with manufacturers in both Brazil and the United States to scale up developed processes for manufacture of pilot clinical lots under current good manufacturing practices (cGMP).

Epidemiological and Clinical Studies: Established a field laboratory and field clinical site, including a vaccine testing center in the endemic region of Americaninhas in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, for the conduct of clinical trials, including Phase 1 (first in human) trials.

Ethical and Regulatory Approvals: Completed Phase 1 clinical trials with ethical oversight from institutional review boards in the United States and Brazil and obtained regulatory approval for clinical testing from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Brazilian regulatory agency, the Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria (ANVISA).