New vaccine against malaria parasite

Scientists have developed a promising new vaccine against malaria intended to imprison the disease-causing parasites inside the red blood cells they infect, the Fox News reported.

The researchers said on Thursday that an experimental vaccine based on this idea protected mice in five trials and will be tested on lab monkeys beginning in the next four to six weeks.

Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Center for International Health Research, said if the monkey trials go well, a so-called Phase I clinical trial testing the vaccine in a small group of people could begin within a year and a half.

Using blood samples and epidemiological data collected from hundreds of children in Tanzania, where malaria is endemic, the researchers pinpointed a protein, dubbed PfSEA-1, that the parasites need in order to escape from inside red blood cells they infect as they cause malaria.

The researchers then found that antibodies sent by the body's immune system to take action against this protein managed to trap the parasites inside the red blood cells, blocking the progression of the disease.

Microscopic malaria parasites are carried in the saliva of female mosquitoes and enter a person's bloodstream through the insect's bite. The parasites pass through the liver and infect red blood cells. They replicate wildly in these cells and cause them to rupture, flooding the body with more and more parasites.

If the parasites remain trapped, they can be harmlessly gobbled up in the spleen by immune system cells called macrophages, Kurtis said.

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