A Hopeful Beginning for Malaria Vaccines

An effective human malaria vaccine has been sought for over 70 years, with little success.1 A successful malaria vaccine used in conjunction with other control interventions would help reduce and eventually eliminate the considerable global disease burden caused by malaria. Many different antigens have been identified as potential targets for malaria-vaccine development. One of these, the repetitive sequence of four amino acids in the circumsporozoite antigen on the surface of the sporozoite of Plasmodium falciparum, arguably the most important of the human malarias, is the basis for the RTS,S vaccine.2 This vaccine was subjected to extensive studies involving human volunteers, . . .