Oxford and Novavax tout 75%+ efficacy for malaria vaccine, besting GlaxoSmithKline in long hunt to inoculate against the deadly parasite

Jason Mast

Editor

No­vavax and Ox­ford’s Jen­ner In­sti­tute have spent the last 16 months mak­ing head­lines for their Covid-19 vac­cines. But, qui­et­ly, the two groups have al­so spent that time work­ing on an in­oc­u­la­tion for a dif­fer­ent dead­ly pathogen: malar­ia.

That ef­fort has now brought its first ma­jor re­sult. In The Lancet Fri­day, in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that their ex­per­i­men­tal malar­ia vac­cine was 77% ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing malar­ia in a tri­al of 450 chil­dren in Burk­i­na Fa­so.

The re­sults, if they hold up in a com­ing Phase III study, could present a ma­jor break­through in the fight against an in­fec­tious dis­ease that con­tin­ues to kill over 400,000 peo­ple per year, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of whom live in Sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa.

Al­though Glax­o­SmithK­line de­vel­oped a vac­cine called Mosquir­ix that was ap­proved by Eu­rope in 2015, the vac­cine is on­ly 35% to 55%, de­pend­ing on the mea­sure. It’s now be­ing rolled out as a pi­lot project in three African coun­tries, but the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has called for de­vel­op­ers to cre­ate a vac­cine that is at least 75% ef­fec­tive.

The new vac­cine from Ox­ford and No­vavax is the first to beat that num­ber in a mid-size tri­al.

De­vel­oped by Adri­an Hill’s lab at Ox­ford, the vac­cine is a virus-like par­ti­cle de­signed to train the body to cre­ate an­ti­bod­ies that com­bat the spores — tech­ni­cal­ly called sporo­zoites — that mos­qui­toes in­ject in­to the body. It’s the same tar­get that GSK’s vac­cine goes af­ter, but pre­sent­ed in a way that’s meant to in­duce a stronger im­mune re­sponse.

To boost the im­mune re­sponse fur­ther, the vac­cine is com­bined with Ma­trix-M ad­ju­vant that No­vavax de­vel­oped for its own line of vac­cines, in­clud­ing its Covid-19 shot.

Al­though in­ves­ti­ga­tors are now launch­ing a larg­er study, Hill told The Guardian that the Jen­ner In­sti­tute might ap­ply for emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion, as they and oth­er de­vel­op­ers did with their Covid-19 jabs. Malar­ia, he not­ed, kills more peo­ple in Sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa than the coro­n­avirus has.

“I’m mak­ing the ar­gu­ment as force­ful­ly as I can, that be­cause malar­ia kills a lot more peo­ple than Covid in Africa, you should think about emer­gency-use au­tho­ri­sa­tion for a malar­ia vac­cine for use in Africa,” he said.  “And that’s nev­er been done be­fore.”

In­dia’s Serum In­sti­tute, which is now pro­duc­ing both the No­vavax and Ox­ford-As­traZeneca Covid-19 shots, al­so li­censed the malar­ia vac­cine from Ox­ford back in 2017. No­vavax agreed last March to a li­cens­ing deal with Serum for the ad­ju­vant, with No­vavax tak­ing a cut of roy­al­ties for sales in low-in­come coun­tries and the rights to dis­trib­ute to peo­ple — most­ly trav­el­ers — in high-in­come coun­tries.