Human trials begin for local malaria vaccine

The country's first malaria vaccine, test-manufactured by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, has entered human trials.

The vaccine technology was developed by the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, in a three-way partnership involving Malaria Vaccine Initiative of the US-based Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) with $ 50 million funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It was licensed to Bharat Biotech as it has been the scaling up and manufacturing partner in the collaborative project.

The vaccine developed by Indian researchers promises to protect against the world's most widespread form of malaria. Samples have been sent to PATH for global trials and the clinical investigations are currently on in different parts of the world especial in India and African countries, said sources from the company.

If the clinical trials are successfully completed, Bharat Biotech will be the first company to manufacture the vaccine for the world market. Bharat Biotech has currently five different strains for the vaccine.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded this project as part of its initiative for helping the drug development projects aimed at eradication of diseases of the poor countries, which are not generally the target of the profit oriented drug research projects conducted by pharmaceutical giants.

Despite efforts to eradicate or control malaria for over hundred years, it still remains a major parasitic disease. Millions of children die due to malaria in Africa every year. The government of India spends almost half of its health budget to prevent malaria.

Campaigns against malaria using different control and preventive measures have been initially successful in different parts of the world. But emergence of resistance of the parasite to the drugs and of the mosquito vector to the insecticides have led to a resurgence of the disease in different parts of the world.

The Malaria Group at ICGEB has been mainly involved in developing and testing the vaccine potential of malaria vaccine candidate antigens and in studying the role of different parasite antigens in the parasite's life cycle.