Australian scientists develop malaria vaccine

31 July 2009

Scientists at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research have developed the world’s first genetically-modified strain of the malaria parasite to be used as a live vaccine against this disease.

The Australian scientists worked in collaboration with researchers from the United States, Japan and Canada.

Human trials will begin next year in the United States.

Professor Alan Cowman, who heads Walter and Eliza Hall’s Infection and Immunity division, said that the scientists had deleted two key genes in the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which causes the type of malaria most deadly to humans.

By removing the genes the malaria parasite is halted during its liver infection phase, preventing it from spreading to the blood stream where it can cause severe disease and death.

Professor Cowman explained that the vaccine will give people a live parasite which cannot cause malaria but will allow the development of antibodies and a response that will give immunity.

“We believe that our genetically attenuated parasite approach provides a safe and reproducible way of developing a whole organism malaria vaccine,” he said.

Vaccine development using a weakened form of the whole organism that causes a particular disease has been successful in eradicating smallpox and in controlling diseases such as polio and flu.

More than one million people around the world die each year from malaria.