A new technique used in an experimental malaria vaccine has shown encouraging results and could again renew global effort to fight the disease.
The approach is known as chemoprophylaxis vaccination, developed by the American company Sanaria. The vaccine was combined with a decades old antimalarial medicine called chloroquine.
All the six volunteers who received a vaccine dose and chloroquine developed protection against malaria three months after inoculation.
As reported in The Times, the researchers said the results was striking because the volunteers had been deliberately exposed to a South American strain of the malaria parasite that was genetically distant from the African strain that was included in the vaccine.
According to Dr Patrick Duffy of the National Institutes of Health, the US government body behind the study - 100 per cent cross-strain protection after three months — was unprecedented.
The results are believed to be vital as an effective vaccine could be capable of providing protection against naturally circulating variants of malaria. A World Health Organisation figures say 400,000 deaths were reported due to the disease in 2019.
The results were published in the journal Nature, and a larger phase two clinical trial of the vaccine is under way in Mali, where malaria is endemic.
It has been 140 years since Plasmodium parasites were identified as the causative agents of malaria, but a vaccine against the disease is yet to be made.
