Mosquitoes are renowned for being pesky little insects that can leave you scratching your arms during the warm months, but for individuals residing in proximity to the Anopheles genus—the only species of mosquito which can transmit malaria—the bite of an infected mosquito is more than a nuisance and can be fatal if not promptly treated with the proper medication.
Each year nearly 900,000 people die of malaria, with the majority of deaths occurring in children under the age of five in Sub-Saharan Africa. With this devastating toll in mind, researchers from the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health and Sabin Vaccine Institute have formed a partnership to develop a novel vaccine—a “transmission blocking” vaccine that would stop the malaria parasite from developing in the mosquito, and thus, block the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans.
Over the next 18 months, MVI, Johns Hopkins, and Sabin will collaborate to produce and characterize an antigen that can activate the body’s defenses to disrupt the complex human-mosquito transmission cycle of malaria. When an infected mosquito takes blood from a person vaccinated with the AnAPN1 vaccine—which field research indicates is capable of blocking transmission of the two deadliest malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax—antibodies in the humans’ blood will prevent the parasite from attaching to and invading the mosquito’s gut.
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