The malaria parasite still kills nearly half a million people worldwide every year. Swiss researchers have now come closer to the development of effective malaria vaccination. You have identified a gene that promises an effective and safe live vaccine.
The researchers have changed the genetic manipulation of the malaria parasites so that he cannot cause malaria. Such living vaccines are already successfully used against viral infectious diseases such as measles. They are considered safe and have few side effects.
Vaccinated material tested on mice
In the future, the weakened parasite could be used as a living vaccine, as the Swiss National Fund (SNF) announced on Friday. It was tested on mice. It had an effect in this, said it in a study in the magazine “Plos One”.
For a really safe vaccine for people, however, it is still a long way. “In the case of a vaccination that must be administered millions of times, it must be ensured that the weakened parasite does not get through and Malaria Triggers,” the cell biologist Volker Heussler of the University of Bern emphasized responsible for the project.
Two genes of the parasite are eliminated
Previously approved vaccines against malaria consist of a single protein of the malaria parasite. According to the SNF, a vaccination currently generates a maximum of seventy percent of the vaccinated protection and only takes about a year without refreshment.
That is why researchers were looking for a way to produce a more effective vaccine of a weakened malaria parasites. In a screening they tested 1500 different variants of the parasite, in which a different gene was eliminated.
The pathogen is put in the liver
In addition, they found a genetically modified parasite that is put in the liver before he reaches the blood and causes a fever. To make the vaccine safer, they also eliminated another gene, which it was already known to stop parasites at the liver stage.
For these studies, they collaborated with the Uneller Plasmodium Berghei, which is closely related to the malaria parasite Plasmodium Falciparum, but instead of affecting mice.
Source: Krone
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