Development of malaria vaccines

Info

Start date: 31 December, 2012 End date: 30 December, 2017 Project type: Larger strategic projects (prior to 2013) Project code: 12-055KU Countries: Tanzania Thematic areas: Health, Lead institution: University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark Partner institutions: National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Tanzania Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), Tanzania Project website: go to website (the site might be inactive) Project coordinator: Thor Grundtvig Theander Total grant: 10,119,987 DKK Project files:

Project summary

Malaria is responsible for an overwhelming disease burden and deployment of effective malaria vaccines would lead to major health gains, especially among most vulnerable groups: young children and pregnant women in rural areas. Tanzania and Denmark are in the international forefront of malaria vaccine research. Tanzania has developed the human resources and technical infrastructure to conduct clinical malaria vaccine trials in compliance with the rules for Good Clinical Practices. Research groups in Denmark are internationally recognised as leading the attempts to develop vaccines to protect women against malaria in pregnancy and in defining antigens for vaccines to protect children against severe malaria. The proposal is based on built capacity, a malaria research needs-assessment and the aspiration of linking to the Building Stronger Universities programme activities and filling institutional needs at the Tanzanian institutions. We propose to lay the scientific foundation for multivalent malaria vaccines targeting two essential host/parasite interactions (the parasite invasion of red blood cells (RBC) and the binding of infected RBC to the vascular lining) and delivering the vaccines on virus particles. The potential benefit of this approach is that such vaccines would induce solid immunological memory and also provide protection against a virus such as human papilloma virus causing cervical cancer, which, as malaria, constitutes a major health problem in Africa.

Outputs

Project completion report:

The main aim and long term aim of this project was to develop new vaccines to malaria. The work proceeded along the normal rute for new medicinal products. The work was divided into a Discovery phase (discovery of new vaccine targets), Preclinical development phase (development and formulation of new vaccines) and clinical development through phases 1-3. During the programme the consortium members has forwarded one vaccine candidate to preclinical development, forwarded one vaccine candidate to clinical development and finalised the clinical testing of a malaria vaccine.

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