Children help researchers solve malaria vaccine puzzle

Australian researchers have found promising new targets for a vaccine to prevent malaria, a disease that kills more than 600,000 people every year. Researchers at Melbourne’s Burnet Institute and the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Institute of Medical Research recently studied 200 children in PNG to see how their immune systems had responded to malaria parasites commonly found in the region. This is a big step forward scientifically. It gives us cause for optimism. They found many of the children had developed natural immunity to the disease through antibodies that target specific malaria proteins. Dr Jack Richards, an infectious disease physician who worked on the study, said identifying these proteins was exciting because it meant scientists could try to mimic the children’s natural response in a vaccine. He said the children’s antibodies appeared to block the malaria proteins from engaging with red blood cells – the process during which malaria infects red blood cells and makes...