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Researchers have discovered a promising new strategy to fight malaria, a mosquito-borne parasite that kills nearly half a million lives each year, and for a study published in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed blood samples from children that were natural. . He had immune resistance to a severe malaria infection.
The study identified an antibody against a malaria-specific protein called PfGARP, which appears to protect resistant children from serious illness.
Laboratory tests have shown that antibodies to PfGARP appear to activate a self-destruct mechanism that causes malaria, causing parasitic cells living in human red blood cells to experience some form of programmed cell death. PfGARP antibodies or direct infusion of anti-PfGARP antibodies would protect them from severe malaria.
The team developed preliminary versions of these vaccines, and tests on non-human primates have shown promise, “We have shown in two independent studies on non-human primates that the PfGARP vaccine protects against a deadly malaria parasite,” said the leader. Study author Dr.
Jonathan Kurtis, professor, Brown University Warren Alpert School of Medicine and laboratory director, Rhode Island Hospital Center for International Health Research.
What’s exciting is that it’s a vaccination strategy that fights malaria in a way that has never been attacked before, one in which the parasite becomes complicit in its own downfall.
We hope that this vaccine, perhaps in combination with other malaria antigens, will lead to a strategy that can help prevent severe malaria in humans. ” According to the researchers, proof of a human vaccine is probably years away. there is no way …
