Media outlets examine efforts to develop malaria vaccines

Jan 20 2010

Scientists have identified a group of proteins they say could form the basis of a malaria vaccine, Australia's ABC News reports. "However, they say more laboratory work and clinical trials need to be done, with a vaccine at least 10 years away," the news service reports (Macey, 1/19).

As reported in the journal PLoS Medicine, researchers reviewed and synthesized data from previous studies that examined "the relationship between antibodies produced by the human immune system in response to malaria infection and the ability of these antibodies to protect against malaria," according to a press release from the Walter and Elisa Hall Institute of Medical research.

The press release continues: "Malaria parasites burrow into red blood cells by producing specific proteins. Once inside red blood cells, the parasites rapidly multiply, leading to massive numbers of parasites in the blood stream that can cause severe disease and death." The researchers from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne and the University of Melbourne discovered that the proteins, "produced by malaria parasites during the blood-stage … are effective at promoting immune responses that protect people from malaria illness," the press release writes (1/19).

"Malaria kills more than one million people a year and is the biggest cause of death in children under the age of five, mostly in developing countries," ABC News reports. The article also addresses challenges scientists have faced in attempting to create an effective malaria vaccine (1/19).

In related news, VOA News examines efforts underway to develop "transmission-blocking" vaccines that aim to keep the malaria parasite from developing inside mosquitoes, effectively preventing its transfer on to humans. This approach will be the focus of a new collaborative between the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the news service notes (DeCapua, 1/18).

Over the next 18 months, the groups "will collaborate to produce and characterize an antigen" - a substance that triggers the immune system to produce antibodies - "that can activate the body's defenses to disrupt the complex human-mosquito transmission cycle of malaria," according to a press release (.pdf).

"Although eradication is a very long-term and aspirational goal, we are excited by the potential of transmission-blocking vaccines to significantly limit the spread of malaria infection," Christian Loucq, director of MVI, said in a statement. "In combination with other interventions, we believe a successful [transmission-blocking vaccine] would provide another important tool in the fight against malaria" (1/15).

Gazette.Net adds details about the collaboration, including how the groups will be working together on the project, and includes comments from Sanaria CEO Stephen Hoffman on various malaria vaccine efforts (Rand, 1/18).