SHT - Possibility of a vaccine for malaria

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http://www.boston.com/dailynews/295/nation/New_research_partnership_may_m:.shtml

New research partnership may make malaria vaccine possible

By Associated Press, 10/22/2001 19:02

ATLANTA (AP) The director of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative announced a two-year, $1.5 million partnership Monday for research and testing of a malaria vaccine.

Dr. Regina Rabinovich said the Maryland-based initiative will team with the University of Oxford and a biotechnology company Oxxon Pharmaccines.

''Malaria has become an unseen epidemic but with the help of funding and partnerships, it is possible to see a vaccine in eight to 15 years,'' she said at the 129th American Public Health Association meeting.

Rabinovich said the alliance will allow development and testing in human volunteers of a vaccine based on Oxxon's ''prime-boost'' technology in which the body's natural resistance to malaria is increased through a two-stage regime. One primes the immune system with one vaccine candidate and the other boosts the immune response with another.

Malaria is a blood-borne parasitic infection transmitted through the bite of the mosquito. It can be fatal, but is treatable with prescription medicine something largely unavailable in impoverished countries. Ninety percent of the world's malaria cases occur in Africa.

-- Anonymous, October 22, 2001


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