Malaria Vaccine: Recent Developments

Malaria continues to be a major health problem in many tropical and subtropical areas of the world. Resistance of vectors to insecticides, chloroquine resistance of malaria parasites and multidrug resistance contribute to malaria resurgence. A malaria vaccine is currently the focus of development in an effort to find an alternative approach to malaria control. Currently tested in humans are synthetic sporozoite vaccines and a synthetic blood stage vaccine. The latter was tested in 27,000 human-volunteers in South America with five out of six vaccines showing protection. [Phil J Microbiol Infect Dis 1992; 22(2):1-3] Key Words: malaria vaccine, circumsporozoite (CS) vaccine, blood stage vaccine