New approach may lead to malaria vaccine
Researchers funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation have used a new approach to rapidly develop and discover a malaria vaccine.
Using information from the recently sequenced parasitic genome, the researchers synthesized hundreds of short α-helical coiled coil protein segments (30-40 amino acids long) that are able to maintain their tertiary (3-d) structure. These proteins are found on the malaria parasite in its erythrocytic phase (when it passes from the liver back into the bloodstream).
Tested with malaria-immune human blood sera, the peptide-specific antibodies inhibited parasite growth in vitro.
Read more about the malaria life cycle.
Read the original research article, published in PLoS ONE.