New malaria drug requires just one dose and appears twice as effective as existing regimen

Scientists are reporting development of a new malaria drug that, in laboratory tests, has been twice as effective as the best current medicine against this global scourge and may fight off the disease with one dose, instead of the multiple doses that people often fail to take. A report on the drug appears in ACS’ Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

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Biologists produce potential malarial vaccine from algae

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have succeeded in engineering algae to produce potential candidates for a vaccine that would prevent transmission of the parasite that causes malaria, an achievement that could pave the way for the development of an inexpensive way to protect billions of people from one of the world’s most prevalent and debilitating diseases. Initial proof-of-principle experiments suggest that such a vaccine could prevent malaria transmission.

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Drug could reverse scourge of cerebral malaria for survivors

Michigan State University researchers, with the help of a groundbreaking medical device, are starting a clinical trial in Africa they hope will provide relief for the hundreds of thousands of children who survive cerebral malaria but are left stricken with epilepsy or other neurologic disorders.

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Unveiling malaria’s ‘cloak of invisibility’

The discovery by researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of a molecule that is key to malaria’s ‘invisibility cloak’ will help to better understand how the parasite causes disease and escapes from the defenses mounted by the immune system.

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First results from Phase 3 trial show malaria vaccine candidate reduces the risk of malaria

Seattle, 18 October 2011 — First results from a large-scale Phase III trial of RTS,S, published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), show the malaria vaccine candidate to provide young African children with significant protection against clinical and severe malaria with an acceptable safety and tolerability profile. The results were announced today at the Malaria Forum hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington.

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Modified vaccine shows promise in preventing malaria

Continuing a global effort to prevent malaria infections, Michigan State University researchers have created a new malaria vaccine – one that combines the use of a disabled cold virus with an immune system-stimulating gene – that appears to increase the immune response against the parasite that causes the deadly disease.

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Researchers discover biochemical weakness of malaria parasite — vaccine to be developed

Every year, 10,000 pregnant women and up to 200,000 newborn babies are killed by the malaria parasite. Doctors all around the globe have for years been looking in vain for a medical protection, and now researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found the biochemically weakness of the lethal malaria parasite, and will now start developing a vaccine to combat pregnancy related malaria.

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2020 vision of vaccines for malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS

In a Nature Perspective Seattle BioMed’s Aderem shares insight into rational vaccine development using new approaches

SEATTLE, WA, May 25, 2011 – Collectively, malaria, TB & HIV/AIDS cause more than five million deaths per year – nearly the entire population of the state of Washington – and represent one of the world’s major public health challenges as we move into the second decade of the 21st century. In the May 26, 2011, edition of the premier scientific journal Nature, Seattle BioMed Director Alan Aderem, Ph.D., along with Rino Rappuoli, Ph.D., Global Head of Vaccines Research for Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, discuss recent advances in vaccine development, along with new tools including systems biology and structure-based antigen design that could lead to a deeper understanding of mechanisms of protection. This, in turn, will illuminate the path to rational vaccine development to lift the burden of the world’s most devastating infectious diseases.

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Newer antimalarials more effective than quinine against severe malaria

Quinine should no longer be the drug of choice for treating severe malaria, according to an updated systematic review by Cochrane researchers. It is now evident that the antimalarial drug artesunate, which is derived from herbs used in Chinese medicine, is more effective at preventing death in patients with severe malaria.

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Natural compounds: the future of anti-malarial treatment

In the run up to World Malaria Day on the 25th April 2011, BioMed Central’s open access journal Malaria Journal takes a long hard look at the development of natural compounds for use in the fight against malaria.

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