The European Medicines Agency gave the Mosquirix vaccine a favorable review after 30 years of research by GlaxoSmithKline (GLAXF) and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
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It remain faces challenges before being introduced in Africa, as well as profitable accord from states together with other funders that it must be worthy of utilizing, given it will provide only incomplete safety.
World Health Organization (WHO) announced Friday that a major milestone for malaria vaccine development has been achieved. The WHO intends to produce a…
“Every day, I see first-hand the enormous toll malaria takes on children, families and communities here in Kenya and across Africa”, Patricia Njuguna, a principal investigator on the Kenyan leg of the drug trial, said in a statement.
The regimen of three doses plus a later booster shot reduced the number of malaria cases by 39% in the older group, and by 27% in the infants, according to Glaxo.
Malaria is responsible for around 584,000 deaths each year, the majority of them being children under the age of five and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The company has not revealed the price of the vaccine, but has pledged not to make a profit from it.
But the results suggest the jabs need to be started later, which would involve a huge amount of organisation and extra cost as it is outside the childhood vaccine schedule.
The drug offered only partial protection that waned with time, researchers found, but even so could prevent millions of cases.
Furthermore, the trial results show it is crucial that children receive all four doses of the jab in order to benefit.
Mosquirix is aimed at young children because their immune system is still developing.
The vaccine is not yet licensed in countries where malaria is endemic, and the WHO says 2017 is the soonest that could happen.
Developed with funding from the Bill & Me¬linda Gates Foundation, Mosquirix was the first candidate malaria vaccine to reach Phase III clinical testing-the final stage before market approval. It works by stopping the malaria parasite maturing and multiplying in the liver, after which it would normally enter the patient’s bloodstream and trigger the disease symptoms.
Prof Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute, Oxford, said that he is much pleased about EMA’s decision and also added that he can not consider the vaccine as a “magic bullet”.
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He said: “A bed net is more effective than this vaccine, but nonetheless it is a very significant scientific achievement”.
