UA closing in on Valley Fever vaccines

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Valley Fever can be deadly to you, and your dog. Now University of Arizona research is close to vaccines to protect both.

There is danger in the dust that can fill the air in Arizona and across the Southwest.

It can carry the fungus that causes Valley Fever. It thrives in the moisture of your lungs. Some people get a case so mild they hardly notice. For others it can devastate lung tissue, and kill.

Now University of Arizona’s Valley Fever Center for Excellencehas a Valley Fever vaccine closing in on human tests. Doctor John Galgiani leads the Center but says other teams led the vaccine development.

Doctor Galgiani says he says it’ll be the first vaccine against a fungus and says creating it was tougher than making a vaccine to fight viruses.

“Fungi are more like us than they are like bacteria or viruses. They have nuclei. There's whole cells, and that makes for some difficulty in figuring out what's the fungus and what's us for the immune system.”

Dogs are at extra risk for Valley Fever because they spend so much time with their noses to the ground. Successful work on a vaccine for dogs has helped propel the vaccine for humans. Dogs may have a vaccine as soon as next year.

Doctor Galgiani says human tests for Valley Fever vaccine could be about four years away.

He says the COVID vaccines came together much faster because the government poured 18 billion dollars into that program and because so many people were sick there were plenty of people to join in the tests.

“There was so much infection going around that you could enroll subjects and within weeks get an answer. But for valley fever, when we do pivotal trials, it's going to take probably three years, because people just don't get infected that often.”

But Valley Fever is a growing concern as hot, dry conditions expand the zone where the fungus lives.