Objective
Malaria vaccines are urgently required. Recombinant multi-component cocktail vaccines are currently favoured. Using very recent technological advances this programme revives the concept of attenuated parasites as vaccines. It bring together for the first leading EU and African groups to develop methodologies allowing the design and creation of parasites with properties desirable in such a vaccine. The ultimate delivery of such a vaccine may be as either sexually incompetent, genetically restricted parasites, or as transmissible self-spreading forms. For either route certain fundamental pre-conditions must be met, and these are the major focus of this proposal;
Systems will be developed to provide
1) auxotrophic parasites
2) sequential unrestricted genetic manipulation of parasites
3) axenic culture
4) parasite knock outs for specific genes and
5) immuno-potentiated parasites through heterologous gene expression. In combination with a dialogue across scientific and public interests this programme will enable the partnership to provide a clear assessment of the feasibility of vaccination with genetically modified malaria within three years.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
2333 AL LEIDEN
Netherlands