The Lancet Infectious Disease
Mar 2010  Volume 10 Number 3  Pages 139 – 212
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/issue/current

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Reducing empiricism in malaria vaccine design
Vasee S Moorthy, Marie Paule Kieny

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Gains in the control of malaria and the promising progress of a malaria vaccine that is partly efficacious do not reduce the need for a high-efficacy vaccine in the longer term. Evidence supports the feasibility of developing a highly efficacious malaria vaccine. However, design of candidate malaria vaccines remains empirical and is necessarily based on many unproven assumptions because much of the knowledge needed to design vaccines and to predict efficacy is not available. Data to inform key questions of vaccine science might allow the design of vaccines to progress to a less empirical stage, for example through availability of assay results associated with vaccine efficacy.