New candidate malaria vaccine neutralises parasite strains | Wellcome Trust

New candidate malaria vaccine neutralises parasite strains | Wellcome Trust

21 December 2011

A new candidate malaria vaccine with the potential to neutralise all strains of the most deadly species of malaria parasite has been developed by a team led by scientists at the University of Oxford. This new work independently confirms the utility of a key discovery reported last month by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, as it involves the target they had identified within the parasite as a potential ‘Achilles’ heel’.

Read full story www.wellcome.ac.uk

Mosquito bites exposure bring scientists one important step closer to making a vaccine

Currently there is no vaccine available to protect against malaria but an experiment bring scientists closer to making one.

In a bold experiment, scientists purposefully exposed people to mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites. At the same time, they were also given a dose of a drug called chloroquine. After three months, these people didn't develop the disease at all, even after they stopped taking the drug.

The chloroquine protected the subjects from the feasting mosquitoes, while the malaria exposure strengthened the humans' resistance to it. At the end of their experiment, all ten subjects exposed to malaria had built up immunity to it. The body's own immune system fought the parasite in its early stage, while the drug attacked it in the later stages.

It is not clearly stated and seems unlikely that the immunity could be achieved in the long term in the face of continuing repeated exposure, but it helped scientists identify a specialized group of cells that guard against the malaria parasite. Their results were much more successful than other vaccines currently used in experiments.

Malaria vaccine closer than ever, scientists say

Malaria vaccine closer than ever, scientists say
AFP - Wednesday, September 29

Scientists are closer than ever to rolling out the first malaria vaccine, which could be available in Africa by 2015, a co-inventor of the shot against the killer disease said Tuesday.

Advanced trials of the RTS,S vaccine against falciparum malaria, the deadliest strain of the disease, are under way in seven African countries and going "very well," said GlaxoSmithKline researcher Joe Cohen, who has been working on developing the vaccine for over 20 years.
"We believe we'll have the first data coming out of the trials in 2012, and, to make a long story short, we could have the first implementation in Africa between 2015 and 2016," he told AFP.


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