Journal article
Preerythrocytic, live-attenuated Plasmodium falciparum vaccine candidates by design
KM VanBuskirk, MT O'Neill, P De La Vega, AG Maier, U Krzych, J Williams, MG Dowler, JB Sacci, N Kangwanrangsan, T Tsuboi, NM Kneteman, DG Heppner, BA Murdock, SA Mikolajczak, ASI Aly, AF Cowman, SHI Kappe
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | Published : 2009
Abstract
Falciparum malaria is initiated when Anopheles mosquitoes transmit the Plasmodium sporozoite stage during a blood meal. Irradiated sporozoites confer sterile protection against subsequent malaria infection in animal models and humans. This level of protection is unmatched by current recombinant malaria vaccines. However, the live-attenuated vaccine approach faces formidable obstacles, including development of accurate, reproducible attenuation techniques. We tested whether Plasmodium falciparum could be attenuated at the early liver stage by genetic engineering. The P. falciparum genetically attenuated parasites (GAPs) harbor individual deletions or simultaneous deletions of the sporozoite-e..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was funded by a grant from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health through the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. Development of the SCID Alb-uPA model for P. falciparum was funded by National Institutes of Health Grant AI067980 (to J.B.S.).