Malaria Vaccine Holds Promise in Early Trials, Safe and Protective

Researchers are looking at the possibilities for an investigational malaria vaccine that has been found to be safe and even generate an immune system response that may protect against malaria infection in healthy adults.

Twelve out of 15 patients were protected from the disease when given the vaccine, known as PfSPZ, in high doses. Scientists first developed this vaccine at Sanaria Inc., of Rockville, Md. where a clinical evaluation of the drug was conducted by leaders of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite that, if left untreated, can develop into severe health complications that could become fatal. In fact, the organization notes that in 2010 alone, an estimated 219 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide and 660,000 people died, mostly affecting the African Region at 91 percent.

For phase-1 of the clinical trial, researchers looked at a group of 57 volunteers who had never been diagnosed with malaria before.

Forty received different doses of the vaccine while 17 did not and then were all exposed to malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

The researchers found that participants not given any vaccine and those given low doses almost all became infected with malaria while only three of the 15 given higher dosages of the vaccine became infected.

"Based on the history, we knew dose was important because you needed 1,000 mosquito bites to get protection - this validates that," said Dr. Robert Seder, from the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, in Maryland, via the BBC. "It allows us in future studies to increase the dose and alter the schedule of the vaccine to further optimise it. The next critical questions will be whether the vaccine is durable over a long period of time and can the vaccine protect against other strains of malaria."

There are currently about 20 malaria vaccine candidates in clinical trials.

The most advanced is called RTS,S/AS01, which has been developed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, and is in a Phase-3 clinical trial involving 15,000 children in Africa.