A professor and lead researcher at Georgia State University has been tapped to develop a new vaccine for a sexually-transmitted disease.
National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, has awarded Dr. Cynthia Cornelissen a five-year grant for $9.25 million.
She’s the director of the Center for Translational Immunology in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University. Her task is to lead a team in developing a vaccine to combat gonorrhea.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there are more than 820,000 cases of the STD each year.
Officials say the U.S. is facing an urgent threat right now because N. gonorrhoeae—the pathogen that causes gonorrhea—has developed a resistance to nearly every drug used for treatment.
