Thursday, January 24, 2019

New Malaria Vaccine based on CMV platform

The search for an effective malaria vaccine has been going on for many decades to treat this serious disease that caused 445000 deaths in 2016 alone. The current Malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, has only been shown to reduce transmission in children. Its effectiveness has been reducing since it has begun to be administered.

Recently a team of scientists have harnessed a cytomegalovirus (CMV) platform that is already being used in HIV and TB vaccines to attempt to create a better malaria vaccine. This attempt resulted after noticing that the T-cells produced by the vaccine exist in high concentrations in the liver, the exact spot where the malaria parasite resides after infecting humans.

This resulted in a vaccine that eliminated between 75-80% of parasites from the liver of rhesus macaques. A year later, the vaccinated nonhuman primates still had immunity against malaria, solving a common problem of the current vaccine whose efficacy diminishes over time. \

The full story can be found at https://www.news-medical.net/news/20190124/CMV-vaccine-provides-a-new-way-to-fight-malaria.aspx

~Angela, 1/24/2019

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