Made possible by years of basic research on new vaccine platforms, the extraordinary success of the Covid-19 vaccine in just 11 months brings renewed hope for other most relevant infectious diseases including malaria. Moreover, optimism abounds as the WHO recommended, on Oct 6, 2021, the use of the first malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01, in children residing in regions with moderate to high malaria transmission. RTS,S/AS01 is not expected to be the last, however. The modest and short-lived efficacy of this vaccine mandate that new, more efficacious vaccines be sought.
So far, a considerable repertoire of vaccines, based on different stages of the Plasmodium parasite lifecycle, have undergone early stage, malaria naïve/exposed phase I/II trials showing some encouraging/promising results. However, due to the parasite’s complex biology and antigenic diversity matched with an equally complex immune response and immune escape mechanism, subsequent vaccine trials of the same vaccine or its’ regimen in malaria-endemic populations have often been disappointing in terms of protective efficacy. Moreover, success in a specific clinical trial setting has not been always reproduced at another clinical trial site. We hypothesize that each clinical trial is seen as an important puzzle piece for an ideal malaria vaccine: safe, highly effective, stable, easy to administer, providing long-term immunity, cost-effective, and feasible for implementation. Clinical trials shed light on how prior and ongoing malaria exposure in malaria-endemic areas influences immunity, the requirement (or lack) of boosting, the necessity to define a protective threshold, etc. for robust immune responses.
In this Research Topic, we aim to highlight clues/lessons from field/clinical trials which will shape and inform next-generation vaccines for children as well as pregnant women and naïve individuals who are at risk of malaria. We welcome the submission of original research, review, and clinical trial articles dealing with, but not limited, to the following topics:
1. Immune responses that confer protection or studies that seek surrogate markers of protective immunity, including utilization of controlled human malaria infection studies for comprehensive analysis of correlates of protection, immunological mechanisms that underpin natural and vaccine-induced immunity
2. comparison of immune regulatory profiles in malaria exposed non- or minimally exposed subjects or poor responders in vaccine trials (including examining magnitude, quality, breadth and different cell types/locations of immune responses)
3. understanding the role of functional antibodies, cellular immune responses, or other effector functions after malaria vaccination
4. Immune response differences by gender or age group or number of exposures (symptomatic or asymptomatic)
5. role of genetic background of the population in determining vaccine response
6. clinical trials for vaccine candidates/new antigens or adjuvants; new vaccine platforms like mRNA, monoclonal antibodies, etc.
7. new assays to evaluate functional immune responses; experimental models for prescreening malaria vaccine candidates.
Made possible by years of basic research on new vaccine platforms, the extraordinary success of the Covid-19 vaccine in just 11 months brings renewed hope for other most relevant infectious diseases including malaria. Moreover, optimism abounds as the WHO recommended, on Oct 6, 2021, the use of the first malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01, in children residing in regions with moderate to high malaria transmission. RTS,S/AS01 is not expected to be the last, however. The modest and short-lived efficacy of this vaccine mandate that new, more efficacious vaccines be sought.
So far, a considerable repertoire of vaccines, based on different stages of the Plasmodium parasite lifecycle, have undergone early stage, malaria naïve/exposed phase I/II trials showing some encouraging/promising results. However, due to the parasite’s complex biology and antigenic diversity matched with an equally complex immune response and immune escape mechanism, subsequent vaccine trials of the same vaccine or its’ regimen in malaria-endemic populations have often been disappointing in terms of protective efficacy. Moreover, success in a specific clinical trial setting has not been always reproduced at another clinical trial site. We hypothesize that each clinical trial is seen as an important puzzle piece for an ideal malaria vaccine: safe, highly effective, stable, easy to administer, providing long-term immunity, cost-effective, and feasible for implementation. Clinical trials shed light on how prior and ongoing malaria exposure in malaria-endemic areas influences immunity, the requirement (or lack) of boosting, the necessity to define a protective threshold, etc. for robust immune responses.
In this Research Topic, we aim to highlight clues/lessons from field/clinical trials which will shape and inform next-generation vaccines for children as well as pregnant women and naïve individuals who are at risk of malaria. We welcome the submission of original research, review, and clinical trial articles dealing with, but not limited, to the following topics:
1. Immune responses that confer protection or studies that seek surrogate markers of protective immunity, including utilization of controlled human malaria infection studies for comprehensive analysis of correlates of protection, immunological mechanisms that underpin natural and vaccine-induced immunity
2. comparison of immune regulatory profiles in malaria exposed non- or minimally exposed subjects or poor responders in vaccine trials (including examining magnitude, quality, breadth and different cell types/locations of immune responses)
3. understanding the role of functional antibodies, cellular immune responses, or other effector functions after malaria vaccination
4. Immune response differences by gender or age group or number of exposures (symptomatic or asymptomatic)
5. role of genetic background of the population in determining vaccine response
6. clinical trials for vaccine candidates/new antigens or adjuvants; new vaccine platforms like mRNA, monoclonal antibodies, etc.
7. new assays to evaluate functional immune responses; experimental models for prescreening malaria vaccine candidates.
