Finally ... a malaria vaccine from Oxford that gives promising results

Researchers in Britain have developed the most effective malaria vaccine in the world, becoming the first to achieve the WHO's 75% effectiveness target.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and their partners reported the results of a Phase-B trial of the candidate malaria vaccine, R21 / Matrix-M, which showed 77% efficacy over a 12-month follow-up period.

They hope that the vaccine will be approved for use within the next two years, based on the speed and lessons learned through the rapid development of "Covid-19" vaccines.

Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute and professor of vaccines at the University of Oxford, has also led the research behind the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine for the Coronavirus.

As co-author of the paper, he said: "With our commercial partner, Serum Institute in India, committed to manufacturing at least 200 million doses annually in the coming years, a vaccine could have a significant public health impact if the license is obtained."

Asked how confident he was that the efficacy would be replicated in the next phase of the trial, Professor Hill told the PA News Agency that the researchers were "absolutely confident".

"We and others found that if you got vaccinated just before the malaria season, you might get a 10% improvement or something like that in efficacy - this hasn't been published yet but will soon be released by another group," he added.

When asked whether this is the most effective malaria vaccine in the world, Professor Hill said: “In the sense that no other vaccine has a primary endpoint with an efficacy of more than 75%, yes. So we are excited. But as you know, there is a final phase of The test must pass. "

Hill said the researchers hope to report results from the final phase of the experiment next year.

“Malaria killed at least four times as many people in Africa last year as did Covid,” he told PA. “Nobody asked for a moment whether Covid should have a review of emergency use and licensing in Africa - of course I did. So very quickly, why not give priority to a disease that first kills children rather than the elderly, and certainly kills an enormous number of people, to obtain permission for emergency use in Africa?

"Nobody asked this question at all before Covid, but we will, and we did, and the organizers seem to be interested. It usually takes three to five years to run a phase III trial - at that time 300,000 children will die in Africa each." General because of malaria. Why should it take so long? "

The first scientific report on the malaria vaccine was published in 1910, the first trial of the malaria vaccine was conducted in the 1940s of the last century, and 140 malaria vaccines were included in clinical tests.

There was no shortage of effort, Hill said, but it was very difficult.

And it was in the meeting when the World Health Organization (WHO) set a target of 75%, and suggested the percentage when there was a discussion about the number that should be settled on.

Professor Hill said, "They gave a target and the WHO is famous for giving targets that would be ambitious. This was 75% effective by 2030. Here we are in 2021, aiming for licensing in two years. So we might get there one time, before the goal." Long time, which would be very, very good. "

He continued to PA: "I've been working on malaria vaccines since 1994, but sometimes I feel a little like that. That's cool, great. We saw our first look at these results six months ago last year and were happy with that. We need to build on this." .

We have supported the trials of a batch of new candidate vaccines in Burkina Faso, and these new data show that licensing a new vaccine very beneficial to malaria could happen in years, said Professor Charlemagne Ouedraogo, Minister of Health in Burkina Faso. It will be a very important new tool for controlling malaria and saving many lives. "

A randomized, controlled, double-blind trial was conducted at the Clinical Research Unit of Nanorou / Institute for Research in Sciences in La Sante, Burkina Faso.

There were 450 participants, aged five to 17 months, divided into three groups, with the first two groups receiving either a low-dose or a high-dose candidate vaccine.

The third group received a rabies vaccination as a control group.

The doses were administered from early May 2019 to early August 2019, well before the peak of the malaria season.

The study, published in SSRN / Preprints with The Lancet, indicates vaccine efficacy of 77% in the high-dose adjunctive group, and 71% in the low-dose adjuvant group, over a 12-month follow-up period.

The researchers did not notice any serious adverse events related to the vaccine.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2019 there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria worldwide, resulting in an estimated 409,000 deaths.

Children under the age of 5 years are the most affected group, accounting for 67% of malaria deaths in the world in 2019.