Collaboration finds success in hunt for malaria vaccine

News about children's health from sub-Saharan Africa is rarely good, but new findings from a trial of malaria vaccine in Mali is bucking that trend.

Malaria is a major health scourge in the developing world, infecting 250 million people a year, and killing 1 million--800,000 of whom are children under age 5. Vaccine development has encountered a number of challenges, including the malaria parasite's amazing ability to genetically morph into any of 214 different mutations. This has proved challenging as researchers attempt to isolate the appropriate proteins to provoke human immunity.

A "North-South" health partnership between The University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Vaccine Development and the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako in Mali, West Africa tested the new vaccine, which was developed by the collaborative efforts of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK), the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), and USAID.

Carrying the ever so catchy name of FMP2.1/AS02A, the vaccine combines proteins isolated and developed by WRAIR with an "adjuvant," or immune booster, developed by GSK to target the malaria parasite in the blood stage. This is the point when the parasite is just beginning to multiply in the human blood stream. Previous research in the US and Mali found that the vaccine was safe in adults, and that it provoked a strong immune response in their blood.

The current research found powerful immune responses in 100 Malian children, aged 1 to 6. These responses proved more powerful than those measured in adults who have developed immunity after a lifetime of exposure. The next step is for the research collaboration to test the vaccine in a larger cohort of 400 children in Mali.

Once again, this research carries lessons in process as well as outcome through the power of collaboration. The partnership between global North (University of Maryland) and global South (University of Bamoko) helps expand research capacity in two directions: Technical expertise flows south and cultural and logistical field training flows north. The combination of private sector (GSK), public sector (USAID, NIAID), and even military (WRAIR) brings a wide combination of skill sets, resources, and approaches to focus on a public health problem killing nearly a million children a year. Since most of these deaths occur in resource poor settings, it is noteworthy that success is not likely to lead to great profits. In this setting, governmental funding can be an essential to allow private sector partners to make the necessary commitment knowing they alone won't bear the total cost of a possible failure.

Though the effort to date hasn't fully snuffed out the threat of malaria, it's a welcome dose of good news about progress in international and children's health. What collaborations have you encountered that are applying the expertise of diverse partnerships to solve global problems?