STEPHEN HOFFMAN, SANARIA INCA vaccine made from weakened malaria parasites appeared to protect participants in a small clinical trial from malaria infection, according to a study published yesterday (August 8) in Science.
“Scientists and health care providers have made significant gains in characterizing, treating, and preventing malaria,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in a press release. “We are encouraged by this important step forward.”
Rockville, Maryland-based biotech Sanaria made the vaccine by irradiating parasite-infected mosquitoes, harvesting weakened parasites from the mosquitoes’ salivary glands, and cryopreserving them.
Researchers tested the vaccine by enrolling 57 adults in a trial carried out at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. They gave 40 subjects the vaccine in various doses, while the remaining 17 participants were controls.
None of the study participants had adverse reactions to the vaccine, and those who received higher doses were more likely to mount an antibody and ...
