Malaria Vaccine Comes a Step Closer

On Wednesday, researchers with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced that a new vaccine (Mosquirix or RTS,S/AS02) for malaria protected 65% of 214 Mozambican infants who had the full course of three injections. The results “show that we are making real progress toward a malaria vaccine," said Dr. Christian Loucq, director of the initiative. The next step is a Phase III trial about a year from now, involving 16,000 infants and young children in 7 African countries. If all goes well, the jabs would be on the market by 2012.

This journal makes no apology for harping on this particular disease even at the risk of boring regular readers. Every year, 300 million people (that’s equivalent to the population of the entire United States of America) get seriously ill from the mosquito-borne parasite Plasmodium that causes malaria. One million people, 90% of them sub-Saharan Africans and 80% of them children younger than 5, die each year from malaria. It can be prevented with a $10 insecticide mosquito net, and it can be treated with artemisinin at $1 or so per course. In short, there is no excuse for mankind not to have beaten this disease already.

In the latest trial, half of the 214 kids got the Mosquirix and a control group got Hepatitis B shots (which isn’t a bad thing to use as a control as that disease does cause trouble as well). Kids got the shots at 10, 14 and 18 weeks. All families got mosquito nets and their homes got insecticide sprays twice a year. Having found no adverse effects, the researchers discovered that infants who got all three shots of Mosquirix had 65% fewer new infections compared to the control group in the three months after the last shot; an earlier study in 2004 showed 45% efficacy. Clinical illnesses over 6 months were cut 35% even if the child got just one shot.

Now, 65% efficacy isn’t really ideal, and no doubt there are other treatments in the pipeline that could boost that rate. That said, 65% of 1 million is 650,000 people, more than the population of Baltimore, Maryland, or more than the residents of Glasgow, Scotland. That is how many lives this vaccine could save each year if the Phase III tests pan out.

GlaxoSmithKine Plc, the developer of Mosquirix, has spent $300 million on the drug so far and may have to spend another $100 million. To make the treatment profitable is a genuine problem because the victims of this disease are among the world’s poorest, but the company does deserve a return on this investment. PATH has ponied up $107 million so far in the development of the drug. Charities are likely to step in and buy the drug to be given away or sold at huge discounts. If a superpower that has lost some of its prestige over the last 6 years were to participate in a “Malaria-Free Africa” campaign, it might even help salvage some of a failed president’s legacy.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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