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“…This is a pivotal success,” said Stefan Kappe, a malaria researcher at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in Washington.
Hope for a cure to malaria is, at long-last, in large supply.
Sanaria, a company in Rockville, Maryland, has developed a malaria vaccine that has become the first in providing 100% protection against the deadly disease. The vaccine, which is called PfSPZ because its makeup is comprised of sporozoites (SPZ,) a stage of malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum (Pf,) uses a weakened form of the malaria organism to instigate a response from the immune system.
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In the safety trial’s first phase, the six subjects who were given five doses intravenously were completely protected from test bites of infectious mosquitos, whereas five of six unvaccinated control subjects developed malaria.
“The trial results constitute the most important advance in malaria vaccine development since the first demonstration of protection with radiation attenuated sporozoite immunization by mosquito bite in the 70s. This is a pivotal success,” said Stefan Kappe, a malaria researcher at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in Washington, to Nature.com.
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The trial will need to be carried over to a wider array of subjects to see if the vaccine will work on the varied strains of the disease and if it continues to provide the same protection for different genders and ages.
