A controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) trial has shown a new malaria vaccine helps in protecting healthy volunteers from infection. The researchers deleted three genes from Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria-causing parasite and then the vaccine was given to healthy volunteers through multiple mosquito bites. The vaccine produced antibodies that stopped infection and were safe and protective for at least one month. PfGAP3KO is the name of the vaccine that stands for Plasmodium falciparum GAP with three knockouts (deletions).
Lisa Jackson, MD, senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, and Stefan Kappe, Ph.D., principal investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington led this study and it was published in a Science Translational Medicine article named “A genetically engineered Plasmodium falciparum parasite vaccine protects from controlled human malaria infection.”