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VACCINES

Targeting malaria transmission

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 22, page 595 (2022)Cite this article

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Transmission-blocking vaccines (TBVs) for malaria aim to elicit human antibodies that block Plasmodium falciparum parasites from developing in mosquitos, thereby preventing disease spread. Pfs48/45 is a conserved GPI-linked protein expressed by P. falciparum gametocytes and is reported to be essential for the fertility of malaria parasites. It is the target of a potent transmission-blocking monoclonal antibody and a leading candidate antigen for TBVs. However, it has been difficult to generate high quality Pfs48/45 protein for vaccination purposes. This group used a computational approach to engineer a stabilized version of Pfs48/45 and showed that mice immunized with liposomes or nanoparticles containing the engineered antigen had markedly enhanced transmission-blocking activity compared to mice immunized with the native protein.

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  1. Nature Reviews Immunology http://www.nature.com/nri/

    Yvonne Bordon

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  1. Yvonne Bordon
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Correspondence to Yvonne Bordon.

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Bordon, Y. Targeting malaria transmission. Nat Rev Immunol 22, 595 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-022-00782-5

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