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The malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, amidst the blood cells. Image: Aku Analis |
by Anne Crawford
Monash University infectious diseases researchers have called for a new approach to malaria vaccine development, criticising those developing malaria vaccines that fail to act on the parasite’s polymorphism – or ability to change form.
Malaria kills almost 500,000 people a year globally and can have a crippling economic effect on the countries in which it is endemic. Some 3.2 billion people live in areas where they are at risk of malaria. No commercially available vaccine exists to prevent the disease.
Professor Magdalena Plebanski and Dr Katie Flanagan, from the
Department of Immunology and Pathology’s Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Unit, say in a review published in the high-impact journal Trends in Parasitology that current malaria vaccines that have progressed to human trials largely fail to provide broad-spectrum protection against different polymorphic parasite variants.