The Roll Back Malaria Partnership talks confidently of elimination—many others question if this is possible without new interventions. The recent publication of the first Phase 3 clinical trial for a malaria vaccine shows promise, but is it actually good enough? REVIEW OF: Roll Back Malaria Partnership, “Eliminating Malaria: Learning from the Past, Looking Ahead”, Progress & … [Read more...]
Glaxo’s RTS,S Malaria Vaccine Shows Promise
Preliminary results from the trial of a malaria vaccine show that it protected nearly half of the children who received it from bouts of serious malaria, scientists said Tuesday. The vaccine, known as RTS,S and made by GlaxoSmithKline, has been in development for more than 25 years, initially for the American military and now with most of its support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. … [Read more...]
RTS,S Malaria Vaccine
QUESTION: What information can you provide on this vaccine candidate? ANSWER: RTS,S is a vaccine candidate against Plasmodium falciparum malaria which works by encouraging the host's body to produce antibodies and T cells which diminish the malaria parasite's ability to survive and reproduce in the liver. Produced by GlaxoSmithKline, RTS,S is the first vaccine candidate against … [Read more...]
Malaria Vaccine
QUESTION: Why is a vaccine against malaria seen as the main hope for the future? ANSWER: This answer is courtesy of a medical doctor assisting us with answering your questions. A vaccine is seen as the great hope for the future because the malaria parasite has an extraordinary talent for developing resistance very rapidly against each class of drug that is introduced into the arsenal … [Read more...]
How can malaria be controlled?
QUESTION: What is malaria? How can it be controlled? ANSWER: Malaria is a disease caused by a single-celled parasite called Plasmodium. There are four species that regularly infect humans: P. falciparum (which causes the most severe form of the disease, and is responsible for 90% of the annual 700,000 fatalities caused by malaria, mainly in Africa), P. vivax, P. ovale and P. malariae. A … [Read more...]
New Malaria Vaccine Passes Safety Test
Most malaria vaccines under development work by including genetically engineered versions of just a handful of the thousands of proteins of the Plasmodium parasite. Those modified proteins are designed to trigger an immune response to Plasmodium, after it’s passed into the host’s bloodstream by the bite of an infected mosquito. In contrast, says researcher Robert A. Seder of the U.S. National … [Read more...]
Malaria Vaccine from Mosquito Saliva
One of the more promising avenues of creating a vaccine for malaria involves going inside mosquitoes' bodies — typically the source of the disease's spread — to develop the key component of the vaccine. Research published online in the journal Science today shows the barriers and future direction for that vaccine. A clinical trial of such a vaccine showed that it was safe, but that it didn't … [Read more...]
IDRI, USAID to Collaborate on Malaria Vaccine Development
The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) today announced a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on support of a collaboration with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) for the development of a new vaccine against malaria. The collaboration is for the development of a novel malaria vaccine, which combines … [Read more...]
Scientists Offer 2020 Vision of Vaccines for Malaria, TB & HIV/AIDS
Collectively, malaria, TB & HIV/AIDS cause more than five million deaths per year – nearly the entire population of the state of Washington – and represent one of the world’s major public health challenges as we move into the second decade of the 21st century. In the May 26, 2011, edition of the premier scientific journal Nature, Seattle BioMed Director Alan Aderem, Ph.D., along with Rino … [Read more...]
New Biomarkers Study Could Lead to Improved Malaria Vaccines
In the first study of its type in the malaria field, Seattle BioMed has been awarded an $8.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify biomarkers that will allow malaria vaccine design based on robust predictors of protective immunity. According to Ruobing Wang, M.D., Ph.D., the goal of the study is to identify and validate biomarkers that correlate with … [Read more...]