Reuters is reporting that there is some level of success in recent testing of a new malaria vaccine.

In a study of 100 West African children aged 1 to 6, the experimental vaccine produced immune responses similar to or even higher than those of adults infected by malaria all their lives.

The vaccine, which uses an immune system booster called an adjuvant from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L)(GSK.N), targets the malaria parasite as it is actively infecting red blood cells and causing fever and illness.

This so-called blood stage vaccine acts at a later stage in the malaria parasite’s life cycle than Glaxo’s experimental vaccine Mosquirix.

“What jumps out to me about this vaccine is the antibody response,” said Christopher Plowe of the University of Maryland in Baltimore and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator whose study appears in PLoS ONE, a journal of the Public Library of Science.

The new vaccine targets the malaria parasite after it has made its way though the bloodstream and into the liver, where it transforms into a new form called a merozoite, which can infect new red blood cells and cause fever and illness.

This is exciting news and we will stay tuned.

Categories:Global Health Community, Health & Science