RNA-Based Vaccine May Fully Immunize Against Malaria

Researchers recently developed a promising new blueprint for an RNA-based vaccine for malaria, which contains similar properties as the novel RNA COVID-19 vaccines. 

Novartis Pharmaceutical and the National Institutes of Health funded the vaccine work.

The patent application for this novel vaccine, of which GSK is an assignee, was published by the US Patent & Trademark Office at the beginning of February. If the patent is approved, GSK can produce the vaccine and make it available to the public. 

“It’s probably the highest level of protection that has been seen in a mouse model,” Richard Bucala, co-inventor of the new vaccine and a physician and professor at Yale School of Medicine, said an Academic Times report. 

“It affects societies and populations that have the least amount of resources and expertise to manage these infections well,” Bucala continued. “We need new vaccines, we need more tools.”

In 2019 alone, there were nearly 229 million cases of malaria and 409,000 deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Generally, this disease affects populations that have the least amount of resources and expertise to manage these serious infections. 

But making a malaria vaccine is challenging because it contains associated parasites that have a complex life cycle. 

Malaria parasites are micro-organisms that belong to the genus Plasmodium (PMIF). There are over 100 species of Plasmodium, which contain a protein that hinders production of memory T-cells.

This is detrimental because T-cells protect against previously encountered pathogens and if the body is unable to create T-cells, a vaccine becomes ineffective. 

Overall, there is a poor understanding of the complex immune response to malaria infection, according to the CDC. 

But recently, experts have discovered that an RNA-based approach may be able to combat these issues. 

Therefore, Bucala and Andrew Geall, a pharmaceutical researcher who developed the RNA platform, discovered a way to prevent PMIF from inhibiting T-cell generation.

Specifically, they created a self-amplifying saRNA platform rather than an mRNA platform, which allows the body to produce the needed T-cells and completely immunized against malaria, The Academic Times reported. 

The benefit of an saRNA is that it can quickly produce copies of itself inside the cell, which makes it effective at a much lower dose. The proposed saRNA vaccine tells a human body to create the PMIF protein, generates antibodies against it, and produces memory T-cells, researchers explained. 

Beyond the saRNA technology’s use for the malaria vaccine, the research team believes that it is a crucial method for immunization design in the future, including for COVID-19, due to its low cost and high return. 

Bucala and Geall have sent the malaria vaccine to Oxford University, which facilitated AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. It is currently one of the only institutions in the world that is doing Phase 1 studies in malaria.

The malaria vaccine is not in humans yet, but Bucala noted that Oxford should be able to allocate the vaccine to people in the most effective way.