Exciting times as we pursue a highly-effective malaria vaccine in HIGHLY-TRANSLATIONAL animal models10/4/2023 Our team has been working for years to develop a highly effective malaria vaccine that works by inducing a specific kind of T cell immunity in the liver called 'liver resident memory T cells'. These cells are meant to populate the liver and then respond to a future Plasmodium sporozoite infection by more rapidly alerting additional immune cells to completely eliminate any and all parasite-infected cells before they can develop into the disease-causing blood stage. We can protect mice with our vaccines with relative ease, but it has been difficult to obtain consistently good vaccine-induced immune responses in non-human primates (NHPs). The latest improvements to our vaccine approach may have overcome that bottleneck as we have now seen improved responses in our NHPs. Below is a photo of Drs. Felicia Watson and Melanie Shears inspecting a dried interferon-gamma ELISPOT plate for these type of responses. These sort of immunization/challenge experiments take a long time (many months!) and we eagerly await the post-challenge results expected late this year. If successful, next steps for this type of approach could include moving into a human clinical trial in the coming years.
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