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Massive malaria vaccine trial to begin within weeks

18 Nov 2008

Paul Chinnock

Source: Associated Press (see original article)

Clinical trials of the RTS,S malaria vaccine is about to begin and should be under way by January. The announcement was made at a press conference in South Africa.

The trials will take place at 11 sites in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Gabon, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Tanzania. About 16,000 African children will participate.

The vaccine has been developed in a partnership between pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKine and the not-for-profit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI). The Malaria Vaccine Initiative has so far spent $107 million on the project and has not yet calculated how much more it will spend. GlaxoSmithKline has spent $300 million so far, and estimates it will spend up to $100 million more.

Joe Cohen, a vaccine researcher at GlaxoSmithKline, said ‘This is probably going to be one of the largest studies in infants and in children in Africa.’

Preliminary trials involving 4,000 children have been taking place since 2003.These showed the vaccine was likely to be at least 30% effective against mild malaria cases and about 50 percent effective against severe malaria. The researchers are hopeful that higher effectiveness rates may emerge from the full trials.

A cautionary note was sounded by Michel Van Herp, an epidemiologist with Médecins Sans Frontières, who said a vaccine might have to be more effective than RTS,S has been shown to be so far to be worth the effort of putting it in use. However, he acknowledged that even a partially effective vaccine would, ‘...at least will reduce the workload on the health sector.’

Researchers at the press conference said that, even if their vaccine did not prove to be effective, the widespread investment needed to conduct the trials means would result in improved infrastructure that would be of benefit in future medical research in Africa

• In September the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $168.7 million award to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative to develop a new generation of malaria vaccines: see MVI press release.

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