New collaboration may help to further development of a malaria vaccine

Officials from the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Sabin Vaccine Institute today announced a new collaboration between the three organizations designed to further research and development of a malaria vaccine.

This new collaboration will focus on transmission-blocking vaccines, which aim to stop the malaria parasite from developing in the mosquito. Researchers say if this is successful, it would, therefore, block the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. Officials at the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative said this could be an important step toward the ultimate goal: the elimination and eradication of malaria.

"Although eradication is a very long-term and aspirational goal, we are excited by the potential of transmission-blocking vaccines to significantly limit the spread of malaria infection," Christian Loucq, MD, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said in a press release. "In combination with other interventions, we believe a successful transmission-blocking vaccine would provide another important tool in the fight against malaria."

Experts said the focus on transmission-blocking vaccines represents a broader approach to malaria vaccine development. "The heart-breaking devastation caused by malaria cannot be overstated," Peter Agre, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute and a Nobel laureate in Chemistry, said in a press release. "Blocking transmission by novel vaccines may provide the approach needed to stop the epidemic. [The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative] deserves great credit for supporting potentially exciting research that would otherwise be abandoned due to lack of precedent."