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.
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