Saturday, May 31, 2014

New malaria vaccine being tested on students



Mosquito spreading Malaria.PHOTO|FILE 
By Syriacus Buguzi,The Citizen Correspondent
In Summary
  • Researchers at IHI Research and Training Centre in Bagamoyo have been working on the new malaria jab for the past decade. Experts say Pf SPZ is being tested here to see if it will offer Africans the same protection it did in US adults.

Dar es Salaam. A new malaria vaccine produced by a US company is being tested in volunteers at Tanzanian universities, raising fresh hopes of developing a jab that will eliminate malaria in the next three to five years, according to researchers.

 
“This is a unique vaccine,” scientists at Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) told journalists in Dar es Salaam yesterday. “It was earlier shown to be safe…and highly protective in US adults who were experimentally infected with the malaria parasite.”  Researchers at IHI Research and Training Centre in Bagamoyo have been working on the new malaria jab for the past decade. Experts say Pf SPZ is being tested here to see if it will offer Africans the same protection it did in US adults. “Three university adults in Tanzania have been vaccinated so far in these initial trials and the vaccine has proved to be safe,” said Dr Seif Shekhalage, a senior researcher at IHI. “They are set to receive their second dose on Monday next week.”
The malaria vaccine in question works by mimicking the effect of mosquito bites and  has shown early promise by offering 100 per cent protection to a dozen human volunteers in the United States. It arrests immature parasites, known as sporozoites, and weakens them so that they cannot cause illness. The parasites have been incorporated into a new vaccine, which must be injected into a vein several times, with each shot about a month apart.
The new development comes barely a week after news of another vaccine that involved Tanzanian children captured the attention of local and global media after scientists in US discovered a protein, PfSEA-1, that would allow the malaria parasite escape from one infected red blood cell and infect additional blood cells.
But, according to the IHI executive director, Dr Salim Abdullah, the clinical trials involving university students are focusing on a wider vision of developing a vaccine that can eliminate the parasite.
The choice of university students for the latest clinical trials prompted questions from a section of journalists, who wanted to know why the rural majority had been excluded from the study, bearing in mind that they are the most affected population.
But, in a quick rejoinder, Chief Scientific Officer Stephen Hoffma from Sanaria--the company that is producing the vaccine--said the selection of the study population and participants depended on volunteers who would accept the challenge readily and understand the complexities of the clinical trials

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