A clinical trial shows the efficacy of a new malaria therapy. The vaccine is administered intravenously and elicits an autoimmune response to infection. The challenge is to demonstrate its long-term efficacy.
Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Institute of Health demonstrate the efficacy of a new therapy against malaria. It is a new intravenous vaccine that could put an end to a disease that kills more than 2,000 people a day.
Although the clinical study is still at an early stage of research, the results published in the journal Science show that it is effective and safe against malaria infection in healthy people.
The vaccine, called PfSPZ, was administered to a group of 57 healthy adult volunteers. The trial sought to demonstrate the possibility of acquiring immunity against the disease under natural exposure to the parasite itself. Therefore, 40 of the 57 volunteers were injected intravenously with attenuated sporozoites, a weaker version of the parasite that causes the infection. The trial has concluded that the therapy has 100% efficacy at the highest doses and allows further development of new clinical trials.
The researchers face two challenges. On the one hand, to demonstrate that this protection lasts in the long term and, on the other hand, to replace intravenous administration by intradermal or subcutaneous administration, since this facilitates its use in mass protection campaigns.
Although there is still a long way to go, the results of the trial are a breakthrough because after more than 10 years of research, a vaccine has been created that generates high-level protection against the malaria mosquito.