Breakthroughs towards a malaria vaccine

Abstract

Since the 1960s, the scientist Ruth Nussenzweig, C.V. Starr Professor at New York University School of Medicine, has been working to develop an antimalarial vaccine. In her testimony, she traces some of the stages through which her research has passed. At the beginning of her studies, most scientists held that it would be impossible to develop such a vaccine. However, a different opinion had been expressed in a paper on avian malaria written some forty years earlier by a British researcher and his collaborators from India. The immunization principle developed by this group was irradiation of sporozoites in order to deactivate the parasite that causes malaria. Ruth Nussenzweig revived and expanded upon this line of research, which now underpins her efforts to devise an antimalarial vaccine for human use.