Knockout malaria vaccine?

摘要

An effective vaccine against malaria remains elusive. But the finding that a genetically manipulated malaria parasite can protect its host lends fresh appeal to the idea of vaccines involving live attenuated parasites. Over the years, numerous attempts have been made to develop a vaccine against malaria, but the task is not easy. So far, one of the best prospects has been to use irradiated sporozoites --the form in which the malaria parasite is injected by the mosquito -- which have proved highly protective. But such vaccines have gone no further, in part because of practical difficulties, in part because of safety concerns. Writing on page 164 of this issue, Mueller et al. describe an alternative approach -- one using genetically weakened sporozoites.