Dr. Stephen Hoffman learned about malaria the hard way—by rolling up his sleeves and letting thousands of infected mosquitoes bite him.
Back in mid-1990s, Stephen Hoffman dipped his arm into a swarm of malaria-infected mosquitoes. But he didn’t expect to get sick. At the time, he thought he’d invented a vaccine that would keep him disease free.
He was wrong.
Read the new publication in PLOS ONE.
Plasmodium vivax (Pv) is the second most important human malaria parasite. Recent data indicate that the impact of Pv malaria on the health and economies of the developing world has been dramatically underestimated. Pv has a unique feature in its life cycle. Uninucleate sporozoites (spz), after invasion of human hepatocytes, either proceed to develop into tens of thousands of merozoites within the infected hepatocytes or remain as dormant forms called hypnozoites, which cause relapses of malaria months to several years after the primary infection. Elimination of malaria caused by Pv will |
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Read the new publication in PLOS ONE.
Background
Experimental infection of malaria-naïve volunteers by the bite of Plasmodium falciparum-infected mosquitoes is a preferred means to test the protective effect of malaria vaccines and drugs. The standard model relies on the bite of five infected mosquitoes to induce malaria. We examined the efficacy of malaria transmission using mosquitoes raised aseptically in compliance with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs).
Methods and Findings
Eighteen adults aged 18–40 years were randomized to receive 1, 3 or 5 bites of Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes infected with the chloroquine-sensitive NF54 strain of P. falciparum.
Seventeen |
Read the full publication in PLOS ONE.
It was recently reported that when mosquitoes infected with P. berghei sporozoites feed on mice, they deposit approximately 100–300 sporozoites in the dermis. When we inoculate P. yoelii (Py) sporozoites intravenously (IV) into BALB/c mice, the 50% infectious dose (ID50) is often less than 3 sporozoites, indicating that essentially all Py sporozoites in salivary glands are infectious. Thus, it should only take the bite of one infected mosquito to infect 100% of mice. In human subjects, it takes the bite of at least 5 P. falciparum-infected mosquitoes to achieve 100% blood |
Read the full paper as published in Human Vaccines.
Immunization of volunteers by the bite of mosquitoes carrying radiation-attenuated Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites protects greater than 90% of such volunteers against malaria, if adequate numbers of immunizing biting sessions and sporozoite-infected mosquitoes are used. Nonetheless, until recently it was considered impossible to develop, license and commercialize a live, whole parasite P. falciparum sporozoite (PfSPZ) vaccine. In 2003 Sanaria scientists reappraised the potential impact of a metabolically active, non-replicating PfSPZ vaccine, and outlined the challenges to producing such a vaccine. Six years later, significant progress has been made in overcoming |
Read the full article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
There has been a recent call for global malaria eradication. The prospects of achieving this ambitious goal are diminished by the limited tool set now available—notably, the lack of a licensed malaria vaccine. This is in large part because the multistage Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria have a much more complex life cycle and larger genomes than do the viruses that cause smallpox and polio, the only infectious agents that have been completely or nearly eradicated from the world by vaccines. We think that (1) vaccines could play as |
ROCKVILLE, Maryland – In a move that highlights the strength of public-private collaboration in tackling international health challenges, the Maryland- based company Sanaria Inc., with support from the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), has initiated a Phase 1 clinical trial—the first tests in adult volunteers—of its unique malaria vaccine candidate. Unlike other malaria vaccine candidates, Sanaria’s approach deploys a weakened form of the whole malaria parasite harvested from irradiated mosquitoes instead of small portions of the parasite.
Having met the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) |
