UT Health San Antonio leading $11 million study of oral vaccine for chlamydia

Researchers at UT Health San Antonio will lead a five-year, $11 million study on a possible vaccine for the nation's most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease. The grant from the National Institutes of Health will take a mutated version of the chlamydia STD to determine if it works as a vaccine against a disease that affects about 4 million people in the U.S. annually. The possible vaccine came about when physician and researcher Dr. Guangming Zhong made an accidental discovery that genital chlamydia in mice had spread to the gastrointestinal tract and made a home there.