Coordination key to realising malaria vaccine dream

A happy conclusion to the search for a malaria vaccination is still a far off dream failing better international coordination, warned a top French scientist on Friday shunning claims of a medical breakthrough at a major international conference in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde. “It is too early to say we have a vaccine against malaria,” said Pierre Druilhi, director of the Biomedical Parasitological Unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, a delegate at the conference. Some 1,500 scientists, health workers and politicians have gathered in Yaounde for the fourth annual pan-African malaria conference, organised by the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria, (MIM). Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that kills 700,000 African children every year, according to the Roll Back Malaria global partnership which is holding its own event concurrently with the MIM conference. “There are about a hundred malaria vaccine trials underway. These trials are based on 12 protein molecules, just 0.2 percent of the total number of protein molecules. So you see, these researchers are simply working on a small piece of the puzzle,” he said. Druilhi’s comments follow claims of a malaria vaccine breakthrough by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) who presented encouraging test results at the conference on Tuesday. GlaxoSmithKline presented trials of the RTS S/AS02A vaccine carried out on 1,442 children between one and four years of age in Mozambique in 2003. A six-month follow up study and another 12 months later revealed a 30 percent reduced risk of clinical malaria. “The unprecedented results in this study is further evidence that an effective vaccine to help control the malaria pandemic, which kills more than one million people in developing countries, is very possible,” said Pedro Alonso, scientific director of the Manhica Health Research Centre (CISM) that worked with GlaxoSmithKline on the tests. But Druilhi countered that such claims were promising too much, too soon. “Although these scientists say their vaccine has 30 percent efficacy to prevent malaria for 18 months -- which in my opinion is not the case -- I'll say we still have more efficient drugs to use against malaria," said Druilhi. GlaxoSmithKline worked with CISM, the Hospital Clinic of the University of Barcelona, the Ministry of Health in Mozambique and the Malaria Vaccine Initiative to develop the jab and scientists involved remained optimistic. “The vaccine can’t be available soon enough because too many kids suffer from malaria," said Melinda Moree of MIV. “If all goes well the vaccine could be available as soon as 2010 or 2011.”