2008 Press Releases

School of Pharmacy Scientist involved in Malaria Vaccine Breakthrough
28.11.2008

An international team of scientists, including Dr Anne Moore of the UCC School of Pharmacy, reported a major breakthrough in their attempts to create a malaria vaccine in the journal Nature Medicine.
Malaria kills approximately two million people every year, most of them young children. Once an infected mosquito bites a person the parasite causing malaria migrates to the liver, replicates and changes into a form that can invade and kill red blood cells. During the subsequent blood stage the parasite numbers rise sharply in the bloodstream after bursting out of cells, causing severe illness or death.

A potent vaccine against malaria would be a powerful addition to current attempts to prevent malaria. Scientists working on malaria vaccines that specifically target the blood-stage of the infection have previously aimed to develop a subunit vaccine; a strategy that involves isolating just one of the parasite's proteins, formulating it with immune-enhancing chemicals termed adjuvants and injecting it into individuals to induce an immune response. Such a subunit vaccine strategy has been effective with many diseases. However, in pre-clinical studies of subunit blood-stage malaria vaccines, multiple immunisations of candidate vaccines, often requiring adjuvants that may be unsuitable for human use, were required to induce immunity that prevented parasite infection.

The team of researchers, funded by Britain's Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, and comprising of British, Irish, French and American scientists, took a different approach. The strategy involves two viruses, adenovirus (a common cold virus) and a poxvirus, both of which have been engineered to be safe and to express the parasite protein. A single injection of the adenovirus induced strong immune responses to the parasite protein. Eight weeks later, the poxvirus was injected and this lead to significant increases in immunity, to a level where the growth of parasites was reduced by 70% to 85%. Such protection against malaria infection in the blood has previously not been achieved with just two immunizations and without the addition of adjuvants. The group at the University of Oxford is now preparing to launch human vaccine trials. If these are successful, the vaccine's effectiveness at preventing parasite infection will be tested, initially in a small number of people, then in a wider population, a process that will take some time.

These vaccines are potentially easier and cheaper to mass-produce than other vaccines. An important point about this vaccine technology is that it can also be used for other diseases as well as malaria. Dr Moore, funded by the Health Research Board of Ireland and in collaboration with researchers at the University of Oxford, is examining if this strategy can be used to generate an influenza virus vaccine that will protect against seasonal as well as bird ‘flu. Dr Moore’s group is performing pre-clinical studies in UCC to examine if vaccines based on adenovirus and poxvirus expressing ‘flu proteins induce protective immunity against influenza virus infection. These studies will provide important findings to the clinical ‘flu vaccine programme led by Dr Sarah Gilbert in Oxford. Other work by Dr Moore’s group, funded by Enterprise Ireland, in collaboration with researchers in the School of Pharmacy and the Tyndall National Institute, aims to develop a transdermal patch that could replace the use of a needle and syringe to deliver vaccines. In addition to more effective vaccines and enhanced immunity, such a skin-patch technology could greatly aid in the logistics of administering vaccines to people, either in the developing world or during an epidemic or pandemic scenario.

RMcD



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