Nature Medicine | Spoonful of Medicine
Better animal models needed for malaria vaccine development, experts say
On Tuesday, highly-anticipated preliminary results from a phase 3 clinical trial of the RTS,S vaccine against malaria found that vaccinated young children had a 56% lower risk of developing the infection. The vaccine’s maker, London’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has been involved with the vaccine since the early 1980s. But its history goes back further to mouse research conducted at New York University (NYU) in the 1960s. Yet, despite a half century of research into malaria vaccines and numerous clinical trials, laboratory models of the disease have changed little — a fact that experts say could be hindering the development of new vaccines.
Recent comments
Real-time tissue analysis could guide brain tumor surgery
Bundled RNA balls silence brain cancer gene expression
Ebola outbreak in West Africa lends urgency to recently-funded research