Development of malaria vaccines

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.