Development of a Vaccine against P. falciparum

Development of a malaria vaccine, first started around 40 years ago when it was found that live sporozoites transmitted by bites of irradiated mosquitoes were protective against subsequent exposure to malaria. Research, though, has gained momentum only in the last decade. It has been fueled by funds from government as well as non-government agencies and by the decreasing prevalence and transmission rates which have again led us to believe that malaria can be eradicated. With the initial aim to decrease mortality, vaccines are being developed against P.falciparum's various stages of development, each stage providing many antigens to aim against.

Apart from developing vaccines against pre-erythrocytic and erythrocyticstage antigens at present, a future goal would be to develop a vaccine against gametocytic antigens which would help in decreasing transmission.

Given the prevalence of abundant polymorphisms, an efficacy of 50 % achieved by the leading candidate RTS,S is considered enough for it to get approved in the near future. Nevertheless, development of a multiepitope and multivalent vaccine covering most common strains of more than one antigen is going on. Also, adjuvants that can recruit different cell types of the immune system and increase vaccine efficacy are in development. Over 20 projects comprising whole organism, subunit and DNA vaccines are in various stages of clinical trials out of which one project aims P.vivax.