It is not the first malaria vaccine, but R21, recommended for use by the World Health Organization in October, is the first that can be manufactured at modest cost and the sort of scale needed for widespread prevention of the killer disease in Africa.
Ginkgo Bioworks Inc. has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a novel cell-based technology for improving protein therapeutics delivery for patients in low- and middle-income countries.
The World Health Organization recently endorsed an economical malaria vaccine with a 75% effectiveness rate, which costs less than half of the initial vaccine (RTS,S/AS01) created two years ago. The new vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, marks a significant milestone after decades of scientific research.
The Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund has announced new investments in the development of a new prophylactic vaccine against malaria, a new anti-malarial drug, and product development projects against neglected tropical diseases.
An2 Therapeutics Inc. has received a research grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to discover novel, boron-containing small molecules for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.
Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) has launched a call for new chemical compounds to screen against malaria through its MMV open innovation (MMVoi) initiative. Submissions from both industry and academia allow for compounds that have already been synthesized but not yet tested against malaria to be identified.
An mRNA vaccine candidate that acts in the liver by recruiting memory T cells could be the key against malaria, according to a study in mice that demonstrated its efficacy by including a natural killer T (NKT) cell agonist.
