Towards the development of a fully protective Plasmodium falciparum antimalarial vaccine

Abstract

If ever there were a truism then it would be that a completely protective Plasmodium falciparum malaria vaccine is desperately needed. Our institute has devoted all its efforts during the last 30 years to developing a fully protective, minimal subunit-based, multiepitope, multistage (targeting sporozoite and merozoite proteins), chemically synthesized antimalarial vaccine, given that peptides with high binding activity to their corresponding host cells (liver cells or red blood cells) form the springboard for vaccine design. However, such conserved high activity binding peptides have to be specifically modified to render them into highly immunogenic and protection-inducing peptides since they are immunologically silent. These modifications, analyzed at the 3D structural level by ¹H-NMR, allow them a better fit into the MHC II–peptide–T-cell receptor complex to induce an appropriate immune response, providing a rational and logical approach (analyzed at the single atom level) for vaccine development, particularly in the field of malaria.

Keywords::

• fully protective
• subunit-based
• synthetic antimalaria vaccine

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Martha Castañeda for typing this manuscript many times and Jason Garry for translating it.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.