A 5-year $4.6 million grant titled “mRNA Vaccines for Pediatric Falciparum Malaria”. Using two recent lab discoveries evaluate three vaccine candidate antigens to block the entry and exit of the parasite from red blood cells and to also evaluate the feasibility of liquid encapsulated mRNA to serve as a delivery platform.
P. falciparum malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries, infecting hundreds of millions of individuals and killing over half a million children in sub-Saharan Africa each year. Despite this horrendous death toll, highly effective malaria vaccines do not exist.