A double knockout against malaria

Developing subunit vaccines against Plasmodium falciparum is difficult because the malaria parasite expresses many different antigens over the course of its life cycle. American and Australian researchers have now designed a genetically attenuated P. falciparum strain that could avoid this issue.¹ The vaccine will enter Phase I/IIa testing early next year.

Although the Plasmodium life cycle has three stages, vaccine developers have focused almost exclusively on the pre-erythrocytic stage, in which the disease is asymptomatic and antibodies should neutralize the sporozoites that can lead to the clinically symptomatic blood stage.²...