More information at http://www.wehiug02.html,.edu.au/information/press/15a
http://www.hhmi.org/news/schofield.html
and http://www.sciencenews.org/20020817/fob1.asp
From: Peter Macinnis
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 12:46
PM
Subject: Malarial vaccine from WEHI
see http://www.hhmi.org/grants/international/directory/scho.htm for
profile on Louis Schofield.
From: "Toby Fiander" > Is this the deeply significant piece of research it seems to be?
Seems that way -- the vaccine provokes antibodies that mop up the toxin while leaving the parasite alone. To me, the cute thing is that there would be NO selection pressures on the parasites, where as anti-parasite vaccines tend to lose their effectiveness in mere weeks. The toxin is a tiny carbohydrate molecule called GPI (short for glycosylphosphatidylinositol) though I sort of gather there is more than one -- anybody??).
Malaria kills 2 million a year, and when you overlay maps of endemic malaria and swingeing poverty, they line up remarkably well -- no surprise when you think of the disruption caused to education alone -- orphaned kids have to go to work, sick kids miss classes, well kids miss classes when teachers are sick, spiral, spiral, spiral.
For some reason, I cannot just say that
it's their fault, so let them fix it. Luckily, Schofield seems to
have the same basic character flaw, but he couples it with a subtle mind,
able to find solutions. If this is a goer, this is Nobel Prize stuff --
and Chris, it may just be there in time to let the WWF loonies stomp out
DDT. All we can say now is that it shows promise in mice, they are
moving to monkeys, and
humans are about two years off.
Peter
Chris Lawson addedThanks to Peter for finding the URL. I had seen a headline about this just this week, but hadn't had a chance to look into it until now. I've still only touched the surface, but to answer your question, Toby, it certainly is a significant piece of research.
As Peter has said, it looks good because it is not an anti-malarial vaccine but an anti-toxin vaccine (like tetanus vaccine). This won't stop you catching malaria, but may well stop you dying from it. Seems to work for the mice. And as Peter says, anti-toxin vaccines have the advantage that the malaria parasite is not likely to evolve a defense against it.
The downsides are this: it has only been trialled on mice and may not work in humans. Time will tell. Also, it may turn out not to be that good if it doesn't reduce the malaria infection rate. If we abandon mosquito control because of the vaccine, we may end up with more people infected, and while fewer of them will die, that will still be a very large disease burden.
