Sanaria  Inc., (Rockville, MD) and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative have officially  opened a clinical manufacturing facility to produce a vaccine that uses a  weakened form of the malaria parasite to fight malaria, a disease that annually  kills more than one million people. The event marks a major milestone in the  effort to translate Sanaria’s approach into an effective weapon against the  malaria parasite, 

Most malaria vaccines currently under development are subunit vaccines  that consist of recombinant or genetically engineered proteins that represent a  portion of the parasite believed to be capable of eliciting an immune response  against the disease. Sanaria, however, is producing a live, attenuated vaccine  that contains a weakened form of the entire organism. 

The  manufacturing facility was constructed to allow scientists to safely rear  aseptically produced mosquitoes, feed them blood containing the malaria  parasite, irradiate the insects to weaken the parasites, and harvest the  parasites from the mosquito’s salivary glands. Sanaria seeks to use these  parasites as the main component of a “whole-parasite” vaccine to be tested in a  clinical trial in US adult volunteers next year. 

News

Sanaria Inc., (Rockville, MD) and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative have officially opened a clinical manufacturing facility to produce a vaccine that uses a weakened form of the malaria parasite to fight malaria, a disease that annually kills more than one million people.