IT’S been a bad week for Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria, with promising results from two trials of the first vaccine for the disease.
Vaccinated infants more than halved their risk of developing malaria
“If these results were repeated in a much larger trial, it would almost certainly lead to approval of the world’s first vaccine against malaria,” says Philip Bejon of the University of Oxford and the lead researcher in one of the trials.
The injected vaccine – called RTS,S – primes the immune system against a molecule on the parasite which is present as it enters the blood in mosquito spit. Bejon says targeting other stages in the parasite’s life cycle could also produce viable vaccines.
In January, Adrian Hill and his colleagues, also at Oxford, will begin a trial of a vaccine which targets the liver stage of the malaria cycle. If successful, it may one day be given alongside RTS,S....