Program Area
Global Health

Our Goal
Help the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) move promising malaria vaccine candidates through the development process and make effective vaccines accessible to people in developing countries.

Our Progress in Brief
MVI currently supports the development of 15 malaria vaccine candidates. The candidate that is furthest along, RTS,S, which was developed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK), showed encouraging results in a recent trial in young children in Mozambique. We made a grant to MVI in 2005 to support RTS,S’s continued development as a vaccine for those most affected by the disease: infants and young children in malaria-endemic countries. If RTS,S continues to meet its milestones, GSK will apply for a license so it can be used among children in Africa, and the vaccine could be incorporated into national immunization programs soon thereafter. RTS,S would be the first human vaccine for a parasitic disease.

However, malaria is an extraordinarily complicated disease, and a single promising trial doesn’t guarantee that RTS,S will ultimately prove effective. Moreover, the vaccine confers only partial protection against the disease. MVI continues to manage multiple research-and-development projects in addition to RTS,S in the expectation that scientists can improve it or develop a better vaccine.

Next: The Challenge

Information in this case study is accurate as of August 2006