Mahidol University's Faculty of Tropical Medicine and the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit earlier this month announced a collaborative project to speed up the development of a malaria vaccine.
Known as Fast Track, the innovation is a project by Mahidol University's Faculty of Tropical Medicine, the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit and the Mahidol Vivax Research. Fast Track is designed to help accelerate the development of a malaria vaccine, from 20-30 years to only 10-15.
"Fast Track uses an artificial infection. Healthy volunteers will receive Plasmodium vivax [P. vivax] malaria [parasite] from clean laboratory-reared mosquitoes and a sample vaccine. All volunteers will be monitored and treated safely. If this vaccine won't work, we will search for new ones," explained Assoc Prof Pratap Singhasivanon of the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University.
From the World Malaria Report, there were 219 million malaria cases around the world in 2017, with around 435,000 reported deaths. In Thailand, the Department of Disease Control reported that there were 6,625 malaria cases last year, caused by two parasites -- P. vivax and P. falciparum. Around 82% of all cases were infected by P. vivax, and 12% for P. falciparum. Currently, there is no vaccine against P. vivax.
"P. vivax is difficult to get rid of because it remains dormant in the liver and the standard medicine doesn't get rid of it. Dr Jetsumon [Sattabongkot Prachumsri, Director of Mahidol Vivax Research] sent infected mosquitoes to the United Kingdom. These mosquitoes were used to infect volunteers in Oxford to test vaccines there. But the best volunteers are from the population that will receive the vaccine. Sometimes vaccines work in one population more than another. People have genetic differences," said Prof Nicholas Day, director of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.
The Fast Track innovation has already been conducted on 140 volunteers in many countries including Australia, Colombia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Thailand will be the first Asian country where Fast Track will be implemented. For safety reasons, this innovation is used only in curable diseases in which there must be medicines available for treatments.
"Six healthy volunteers will be examined for their fitness before receiving P. vivax," Dr Jetsumon explained. "The volunteers will have blood tests and receive medical care so they won't be ill. They will also have to take a 14-day medicine course. We will start to search for six volunteers around October or November. If the study succeeds, we can use this model to test vaccines for other curable diseases."
