Issue: April 2004
Grants
Research help from US-based malaria vaccine initiative
LA TROBE RECEIVES NEW R&D FUNDS
La Trobe University is participating in a $4.3 million research grant from the US-based PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) to bring a malaria vaccine to the clinical trials stage.
PATH is an international, non-profit organisation that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling commu-nities worldwide to break long-standing cycles of poor health. MVI is PATH's focused malaria vaccine deve-lopment program.
Under the auspices of the Cooperative Research Centre for Vaccine Technology (CRC-VT), La Trobe Department of Chemistry is working with the Adelaide-based company GroPep Ltd to develop to the manu-facturing stage a vaccine called Merozoite Surface Protein 2 (MSP-2).
Leader of the La Trobe team, Professor Robin Anders, said that the new funding would allow the final stages of vaccine manufacture to be completed, enabling clinical trials to start in 18-24 months.
MSP-2 - developed by Professors Anders and others within the CRC-VT over several years - is a malarial antigen which is a possible component of a future malaria vaccine.
'With this antigen we hope to induce an antibody response which will prevent the malaria parasite invading the red blood cells after a person has been bitten by a malaria-carrying mosquito,' Professor Anders said.
'If we can prevent the parasite infecting red blood cells, any infection is stopped in its tracks and no symptoms of malaria appear.'
La Trobe's direct share of the grant is $500,000 with the remaining $3.8 million going to GroPep Ltd with the two organisations working closely together to prepare the antigen for the clinical trials which will probably be carried out in Australia on volunteers who have had no prior exposure to malaria.
'After that, there will be further trials on those exposed to malaria, probably in Papua New Guinea where previous trials have been carried out by our collaborators at the PNG Institute of Medical Research,' Professor Anders said.
If malaria control programs were fully funded, experts projected that malaria deaths could be cut in half by 2010 and halved again by 2015. Malaria kills an estimated one million people annually, most of them in Africa. About 3000 African children die of malaria every day.
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