Malaria vaccines

Abstract

More than 120 years after Alphonse Laveran's discovery of the blood-stage malaria parasite, there is no licensed malaria vaccine and malaria remains the world's most serious parasitic disease. Efforts to develop a vaccine have been thwarted by the complexity of the parasite's life cycle and the ability of the parasite to suppress and evade the immune response. Currently, there are several candidate vaccines in clinical trials and many more candidate vaccines that have shown efficacy in animal models or are based on studies of the immune responses of people who are resistant to malaria. The sequencing of the genomes of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium yoelii yoelii in 2002 is expected to result in the identification of previously-unknown candidate vaccine targets from various stages of the Plasmodium life cycle. A great deal of effort is going into identifying the correlates of protection, potentially allowing more efficient testing of candidate vaccines in the future. The fact that a vaccine candidate has shown partial protection in field trials is a reason for hope that, with the proper effort and support, effective vaccines against malaria can be developed.

Meta‐analysis of immune epitope data for all Plasmodia: overview and applications for malarial immunobiology and vaccine‐related issues

“…On one hand, this complexity presents many potential target antigens to incorporate into different prophylactic or therapeutic modalities. Indeed, candidate vaccines have targeted all life cycle stages (sporozoite, liver, blood and sexual stage), a number of which are currently in clinical trials (9–11). However, with the exception of RTS,S (12), candidate vaccines to date have been not completely efficacious (13) and the recent field trials of promising recombinant protein vaccines (11,14,15) suggest that current understanding and vaccine development strategies may be suboptimal.…”

Genome-wide SNP genotyping highlights the role of natural selection in Plasmodium falciparumpopulation divergence

“…Plasmodium falciparum is the most virulent species of malaria and the primary cause of malaria-related mortality across the globe. The success of P. falciparum as a pathogen derives in part from its high levels of genetic diversity [ 1 - 4 ], diversity that endows the parasite with the evolutionary agility to rapidly develop resistance to a series of drugs developed for its control [ 5 ], to thwart the development of effective vaccines [ 6 ], and to efficiently evade immune responses [ 7 - 9 ]. Large-scale genotyping of P. falciparum will improve understanding of these capabilities, and will permit wide-ranging investigation of the parasite's biology, including population structure and history, outcrossing and recombination frequency and instances of natural selection, and inform effective intervention strategies.…”

Evaluation of larvicidal properties of the latex of Euphorbia tirucalli L. (Euphorbiaceae) against larvae of Anopheles mosquitoes

“…Malaria is the most important vector-borne disease in the tropics and sub-tropics (Komisar, 2007;Stratton, 2008). WHO (www.who.int/whosis) reports that malaria affects over 100 countries and approximately 40% of the world's population, killing about one million people annually.…”