Cell host microbe: new research helps to develop malaria vaccine

November 18, 2019 / BIOON / -- recently, Professor Denise Doolan and others of Australian Institute of tropical health and medicine (aithm) published an article, which narrowed the scope of vaccine and antibody development against severe malaria According to the latest data from the World Health Organization, there were 219 million malaria cases worldwide in 2017, with an estimated 435000 deaths "Due to the special survival strategy of malaria parasite in human body, it grows in blood cells and inserts proteins into the surface of blood cells to adhere to the blood vessel wall It makes the development of vaccines or therapeutic antibodies very difficult "Plasmodium can evade the immune response by changing the protein structure, and each strain has different protein composition, which makes it extremely difficult to identify vaccine targets." (image source: www Pixabay Com) a team of collaborators including the author collected hundreds of PfEMP1 proteins from hundreds of malaria strains from Australia By making custom protein microarrays of these strains and examining serum samples, we can determine which PfEMP1 variants are related to immune protection The project is an important step in developing a viable vaccine, said Alyssa Barry, associate professor at Deakin School of Medicine's infection systems epidemiology research group "For many years, researchers have considered it almost impossible to develop a malaria vaccine based on PfEMP1 because of its high diversity." "Using genome sequencing, we collected PfEMP1 proteins from different malaria strains, measured the antibodies to these proteins, and then used machine learning to identify the types of protective antibodies We were able to identify these antibodies by monitoring the type of disease, and then we tested them in children for 16 months to determine which of them were more susceptible to the more serious disease " Sources of information: scientists close in on malaria vaccine original sources: sofonias K tessema, RIE Nakajima, algis jasinskas, Stephanie L monk, lea lekieffre, emore Lin, Benson kiniboro, Carla Proietti, Peter Siba, Philip L felgner, Denise L Doolan, Ivo Mueller, Alyssa E Barry Protective Immunity against Severe Malaria in Children Is Associated with a Limited Repertoire of Antibodies to Conserved PfEMP1 Variants Cell Host & Microbe , 2019; 26 (5): 579 DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2019.10.012