Seattle BioMed has been hot on the heels of Big Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, which is in the last of three phases of clinical trials with a vaccine candidate. The Glaxo vaccine, RTS,S has shown an ability to protect about half of people from the parasite, which causes nasty anemia that can be fatal, especially for children in sub-Saharan Africa. Seattle BioMed isn’t satisfied with that amount of protection, and is shooting for a vaccine that offer 90 percent protection.
Seattle BioMed has developed a live, weakened form of the malaria parasite as the key ingredient in its vaccine candidate. This trial, posted already on clinicaltrials.gov, is designed to enroll 32 healthy volunteers at a single site, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, MD. They will be given five doses of vaccine, four weeks apart. And here’s the kicker—the vaccine will be “challenged” when the volunteers are exposed and bitten by mosquitos carrying real malaria. These people, obviously, are going to be monitored extremely carefully, and if the vaccine doesn’t appear to be protecting them right away, they will be given a drug to treat the malaria before it starts causing problems for the volunteers.
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/03/26/nine-years-in-the-making-seattle-biomeds-malaria-vaccine-on-verge-of-first-human-trial/