PATH’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) announced a new collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) and the Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) “to initiate development toward a vaccine that may eventually help eliminate and eradicate malaria.” The collaboration “marks MVI’s first investment in transmission-blocking vaccines (TBVs),” which aim “to stop the malaria parasite from developing in the mosquito, effectively blocking transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans.” PATH noted that malaria kills nearly 900,000 people per year, most of them children younger than age five.

Dr. Peter Agre, Nobel Laureate and Director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (JHMRI), said, “Blocking transmission by novel vaccines may provide the approach needed to stop the epidemic. MVI deserves great credit for supporting potentially exciting research that would otherwise be abandoned due to lack of precedent.” Dr. Christian Loucq, Director of MVI, commented, “Although eradication is a very long-term and aspirational goal, we are excited by the potential of transmission-blocking vaccines to significantly limit the spread of malaria infection. In combination with other interventions, we believe a successful TBV would provide another important tool in the fight against malaria.”

Over the next 18 months, MVI’s partners will collaborate to produce and characterize an antigen that can activate the body’s defenses to disrupt the complex human-mosquito transmission cycle of malaria. An antigen is any substance that triggers the immune system to produce antibodies against it. The development team will identify the optimal conditions needed to manufacture clinical supplies of AnAPN1, a mosquito antigen that appears to play a major role in parasite establishment within the mosquito. Preliminary field research has shown that antibodies induced by this antigen are capable of blocking transmission of the two deadliest malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax. When a mosquito takes blood from a vaccinated person, these antibodies prevent the parasite from attaching to and invading the mosquito’s gut.

PATH noted that the collaboration—MVI’s first project focused on TBVs— “reflects MVI’s redesigned research and development strategy. The new strategy encompasses a broader outlook on malaria vaccine development and promotes early investment in a variety of approaches that have the potential to reach the malaria community’s long-term goal of a vaccine that is at least 80 percent effective against clinical disease for more than four years by 2025.”  More at: http://www.path.org/news/pr100115-malaria-vaccine.php