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Cheap malaria vaccination in sight |
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Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami
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Sunday, 16 January 2011 |
In tropical and subtropical parts of the world malaria is a widespread disease which is transmitted by the malaria mosquito. When a mosquito carries the protozoa Plasmodium falciparum and bites a person it transmits the pathogen of the severe fever disease. Nearly half a billion human beings are affected worldwide and more than 1 Million die each year by malaria, especially infants and children are among the victims.Now french scientists from the university of Lille (France) succeeded
in vaccinating lab mice against malaria with a very cheap and promising
approach: They combined Plasmodium antigenes (structures on the cell surface of a
pathogen which are recognized by the immune system) with starch granulae (corns) of
the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and fed the mice with the
modified starch. Afterwards the animals showed resistance against
malaria when infected with the protozoa.
The starch corns of Chlamydomonas contain an enzyme (GBSS) which was
fusioned with the malaria antigens. It is located inside the core of
such a starch corn and therefore the enzyme GBSS and the antigen are
protected from digestion enzymes in the stomach and gut if the vaccine
is applied orally. So the antigen can reach the blood an can be
discovered by antibodies and the immune system can develop immunity for
malaria.
Cheap oral inoculation for Africa?
Almost 80% of diseased persons live in Africa. Next to the problem of a
cheap and broad available vaccination the scientists tried to face an
acceptance problem of usually used syringe vaccination which in Africa
can increase the risk of AIDS-Infection. Maybe many persons would
hesitate to be injected.
The scientists developed alternatives so that the use of injection
needles is not neccessary and the vaccine can be administered orally or
by nasal sprays. This kind of new vaccination strategy may improve
infants health in Africa and elsewhere and could be a milestone on the
way to better protection of billion human beings living in areas with
malaria.
With the coming climate change and the possible dispersion of the
malaria mosquito to temperate zones in the future it might become more
important to people of Europe and North Amercia alike to get cheap and
easy vaccination.
Source:
- [1] Originalpublikation: "Engineering the Chloroplast Targeted
Malarial Vaccine Antigens in Chlamydomonas Starch Granules", PloS One
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