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  • OUTLOOK

Building a better malaria vaccine

As the first vaccine against the malaria parasite begins to roll out, scientists are working on a wide variety of alternatives that they hope will provide more protection.
  1. Anthony King

    1. Anthony King is a freelance science writer based in Dublin.

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Transmission electron micrograph of merozoite-stage malarial parasites, which have caused a red blood cell to rupture. Credit: DENNIS KUNKEL MICROSCOPY/SPL

In 1991, when immunologist Patrick Duffy was joining the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the research community was sceptical that it would be possible to vaccinate against parasites — especially the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. These organisms, each just a few micrometres across, can shape-shift and hide from the human immune system, moving from the blood into liver cells, before bursting out in a new form to take over red blood cells. They deploy similar cellular machinery to humans, and are much more complex than viral or bacterial foes — for instance, whereas the Ebola virus can encode 7 proteins, Plasmodium boasts genes for 5,000.

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Nature 575, S51-S54 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03639-5

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Vaccines, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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