QUESTION:

What information can you provide on this vaccine candidate?

ANSWER:

RTS,S is a vaccine candidate against Plasmodium falciparum malaria which works by encouraging the host’s body to produce antibodies and T cells which diminish the malaria parasite’s ability to survive and reproduce in the liver.

Produced by GlaxoSmithKline, RTS,S is the first vaccine candidate against Plasmodium falciparum that has reached advanced (Phase III) clinical field trials on a large scale. It was developed way back in 1987, and had successive trials in the United States in 1992 and then in Africa in 1998. In 2001, GSK and the Malaria Vaccine Initiative at PATH went into a public-private partnership, with grant money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop the vaccine for use in children and infants in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Phase III trials are currently underway in a number of African countries; if all goes to plan, the vaccine will be submitted for regulation by drug authorities as early as 2012. This information, and more, can be found courtesy of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative website: http://www.malariavaccine.org/index.php.