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Pregnancy malaria vaccine passes test in humans

A vaccine against fatal pregnancy malaria has shown promising results in the first test in humans.

The study conducted at the University of Copenhagen has untraditionally taken a vaccine all the way from discovery of a mechanism through development and production to clinical trials in humans. For many years, researchers at the University of Copenhagen   have been focussing on developing a vaccine that can protect against the disease pregnancy malaria from which 220,000 people die every year.

Now they have come a significant step closer to being able to introduce such a vaccine in the market. In a new study published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases the vaccine has been subjected to so-called phase one clinical trial, and the results are uplifting: The vaccine is safe to use, and it passes the test by inducing the right antibody response in the blood.

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‘It is a great milestone for us to be able to show that our vaccine is completely safe and induces the exact antibody response in the blood we want. Because it is the immune response that has been shown to be connected with protection from pregnancy malaria. The next step is to document that it prevents pregnancy malaria in African women who would otherwise have contracted the disease’, says main author of the study, Associate Professor Morten Agertoug Nielsen from the Department of Immunology and Microbiology.

Safety First
The researchers have applied the normal method for testing new drugs by doing a so-called randomised, double-blind study. This means that the test subjects were randomly given the vaccine and placebo, respectively, and neither the subjects nor the researchers performing the study knew who got what.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria infection during pregnancy  can have adverse effects on both mother and feotus, including maternal anemia, fetal loss, premature delivery, intrauterine growth retardation, and delivery of low birth-weight infants which is  a risk factor for death.

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