PIO-led team designs novel vaccine to help fight malaria

A team led by an Indian-origin scientist has designed a new "second generation" malaria vaccine that may offer protection against Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which causes the deadly disease.

Malaria, which infected about 228 million individuals worldwide in 2018, remains a threat to public health and regional stability, according to Sheetij Dutta from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in the US.

Large human populations live in malaria-infested regions of Africa, Southeast Asia and South America, where mosquitoes continuously transmit the malaria parasites from sick to healthy individuals.

Though infection rates have been decreasing, this decline has stagnated in recent years, necessitating novel interventions, according to the study published in the journal PNAS.

The first generation malaria vaccine, RTS,S (Mosquirix), is based on the circumsporozoite protein (CSP) of Plasmodium falciparum.

CSP is a secreted protein of the malaria parasite, and is the