A type of malaria vaccine for humans is to be tested, following the success of trials undertaken with animals.
There is currently no vaccine for the illness, which kills between two and three million people every year. Oxford University scientists, part of an international team, reported, in the journal Nature Medicine, that its virus-based jab worked well in mice. Initial small-scale human safety trials of the vaccine are now expected to start next year.
Other researchers have been working towards an effective malaria vaccine, and some candidates are already in trials in humans in malaria-affected countries. However, the Oxford scientists say theirs may be more effective against the "blood stage" of the illness, in which parasite numbers rise sharply in the bloodstream after bursting out of cells, causing severe illness, or death.
The scientists behind this vaccine believe that it can trigger a massive immune response against the parasite at this point. The method involves two viruses, a common cold virus (adenovirus) and a pox virus, both of which have been engineered to be harmless in themselves, but to produce a protein on their surfaces which matches one found on the outside of the malaria parasite.
Read more...
There is currently no vaccine for the illness, which kills between two and three million people every year. Oxford University scientists, part of an international team, reported, in the journal Nature Medicine, that its virus-based jab worked well in mice. Initial small-scale human safety trials of the vaccine are now expected to start next year.
Other researchers have been working towards an effective malaria vaccine, and some candidates are already in trials in humans in malaria-affected countries. However, the Oxford scientists say theirs may be more effective against the "blood stage" of the illness, in which parasite numbers rise sharply in the bloodstream after bursting out of cells, causing severe illness, or death.
The scientists behind this vaccine believe that it can trigger a massive immune response against the parasite at this point. The method involves two viruses, a common cold virus (adenovirus) and a pox virus, both of which have been engineered to be harmless in themselves, but to produce a protein on their surfaces which matches one found on the outside of the malaria parasite.
Read more...
topics:
Earth and Science,
Research,
Vaccines,
Malaria,
Oxford University,
Parasite
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- unclepete
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- added August 05, 2008
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