Bloomberg: Malaria Vaccine Took 30 Years. It’s Still a Work in Progress
“After more than three decades of work and almost $1 billion of investment, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and its partners are ready to deploy a vaccine for malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills almost half a million people each year. The [RTS,S] vaccine, developed with the non-profit organization PATH, comes at a critical time and marks a milestone in the battle against the parasite that causes malaria. But the injection is a pioneer, not a panacea: it prevented only about four in 10 malaria cases among children who received four doses in a large study. A pilot program is scheduled to begin this month in Africa to size up the product, which has the potential to save tens of thousands of children’s lives, according to the World Health Organization…” (Paton, 4/16).

Nature: Promising malaria vaccine to be tested in first large field trial
“A [different] malaria vaccine that can provide up to 100% protection against the disease will be tested in a large clinical trial for the first time, to study its efficacy under real-world conditions. The trial will begin in early 2020 on Bioko, an island off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, and will involve 2,100 people aged 2-50 years. The trial is intended to provide the efficacy and safety data needed for regulatory approval, says malaria researcher Steve Hoffman, who is leading the study and is chief executive of Sanaria, the company in Rockville, Maryland, that developed the vaccine. Equatorial Guinea’s government and private energy companies are sponsoring the trial. In laboratory studies, the vaccine, called PfSPZ, has proven the most effective malaria vaccine developed so far, giving healthy volunteers complete protection…” (Butler, 4/16).