Even after 140 years of its discovery, malaria remains one of the deadliest infections humans have ever encountered. It affected 247 million individuals and was responsible for over 600,000 deaths in 2022, according to the World Health Organization. What’s more shocking is that 95 percent of malaria cases and deaths are reported in Africa alone, and 80 percent of the people who die in various African countries due to malaria are children under 5.
Currently, there exists only one malaria vaccine called RTS,S, and it only offers partial protection in children. However, a newly developed vaccine elicits a much stronger immune response in children, and it could offer layered protection to everyone by targeting a different stage of the malarial parasite’s life cycle.
The RH5 vaccine
A team of researchers from the University of Oxford recently tested a new malaria vaccine on 63 participants ranging in age from 6 months to 35 years in Bagamoyo, a town in Tanzania. The vaccine is technically ChAd63-MVA RH5, but generally called the RH5 vaccine. It exclusively targets RH5, a protein that Plasmodium falciparum (malaria parasite) employs to penetrate human red blood cells.
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