A look at achieving progress and impact from Dr. Christian Loucq, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative

April 25, 2011—On this fourth World Malaria Day, the impact of donor investments in malaria vaccine research and development (R&D) is undeniable. In addition to unprecedented progress with a first-generation vaccine candidate that aims to protect young children in Africa from disease, work is advancing on a new generation of vaccine approaches that support the global push to eliminate malaria.

Increased financial support over the last decade has propelled the vaccine candidate RTS,S into late-stage development. At the end of January, the large-scale Phase 3 efficacy trial of RTS,S reached its target enrollment of more than 15,000 infants and young children in seven African countries through a collaboration that involves the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, and African researchers.

MVI is already building on this progress, by identifying and advancing a next generation of approaches in keeping with the renewed global focus on elimination and eradication, and bearing in mind that vaccines have played an essential role in past elimination campaigns, such as those against small pox and polio.

In this regard, MVI is working on a variety of fronts. In addition to approaches meant to protect children against clinical disease, our projects now include innovative initiatives that seek to disrupt the life cycle of the malaria parasite and interrupt transmission of the parasite from mosquitoes to humans. Transmission-blocking vaccine approaches are attracting heightened interest, and have the potential to be used with more traditional vaccines and with other interventions to make elimination and even eradication of the disease a reality.

Pursuing this multi-pronged research and development strategy also means diversifying our collaborations, as demonstrated by our work with partners such as India's Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Merck, and the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

As we move closer to the reality of a first malaria vaccine and as work progresses on a new generation of approaches, the need for fresh investments in malaria vaccine R&D is even more crucial. More than anything, we need a continued focus on the malaria community's concerted effort to control and gradually eliminate a disease that kills roughly 800,000 people each year, almost all of them young children in Africa.

Photo: PATH.