Despite over a century of work to control or eradicate malaria, this plague continues to take a devastating toll, largely in developing and economically poor nations.
According to the World Health Organization, there are currently no approved licensed malaria vaccines. Over 20 vaccine research projects are in clinical trials, with the most advanced for falciparum malaria in Phase III, recently reaching 75% efficacy in children under 5 years of age, the minimum benchmark protection for WHO vaccines. It is our goal to create a vaccine that is 100% efficacious and capable of preventing both falciparum and vivax malaria. With our approach, we believe this is possible.
We are taking a new approach to malaria vaccine development: using a mRNA dose to “prime” the immune system, followed by an genetically engineered whole-parasite vaccine produced in culture to “target” immune cells in the liver where they protect against future malaria infection.