title: Vaccines against malaria.
abstract: There is no licenced vaccine against any human parasitic disease and Plasmodium falciparum malaria, a major cause of infectious mortality, presents a great challenge to vaccine developers. This has led to the assessment of a wide variety of approaches to malaria vaccine design and development, assisted by the availability of a safe challenge model for small-scale efficacy testing of vaccine candidates. Malaria vaccine development has been at the forefront of assessing many new vaccine technologies including novel adjuvants, vectored prime-boost regimes and the concept of community vaccination to block malaria transmission. Most current vaccine candidates target a single stage of the parasite's life cycle and vaccines against the early pre-erythrocytic stages have shown most success. A protein in adjuvant vaccine, working through antibodies against sporozoites, and viral vector vaccines targeting the intracellular liver-stage parasite with cellular immunity show partial efficacy in humans, and the anti-sporozoite vaccine is currently in phase III trials. However, a more effective malaria vaccine suitable for widespread cost-effective deployment is likely to require a multi-component vaccine targeting more than one life cycle stage. The most attractive near-term approach to develop such a product is to combine existing partially effective pre-erythrocytic vaccine candidates.
authors: The Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus Research Building, Oxford OX37DQ, UK. adrian.hill@ndm.ox.ac.uk
authors: Adrian V S
authors: AV
authors: Hill
mesh_terms: D000276:Adjuvants, Immunologic; D000818:Animals; D000953:Antigens, Protozoan / Q000276:immunology; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D009033:Culicidae / Q000276:immunology / Q000469:parasitology; D015195:Drug Design; D006801:Humans; D007111:Immunity, Cellular; D017780:Malaria Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000276:immunology*; D016778:Malaria, Falciparum / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D010963:Plasmodium falciparum / Q000276:immunology / Q000472:pathogenicity; D034101:Sporozoites / Q000276:immunology; D014611:Vaccination; D022223:Vaccines, Subunit / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D000276:Adjuvants, Immunologic; D000953:Antigens, Protozoan; D017780:Malaria Vaccines; D022223:Vaccines, Subunit