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.
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.
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.
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