The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), established in 1999, is a vaccine development program established by the global health nonprofit organization PATH. MVI works to accelerate the development of safe, effective, and affordable malaria vaccines and to ensure their availability and accessibility in the developing world, where malaria still kills nearly a million people and severely hampers economic development.
MVI works with partners across government, academia, and industry to identify potentially promising malaria vaccine candidates and move them through the development process from the laboratory to clinical trials in malaria endemic countries. Additionally, MVI also engages in activities to ensure that successful vaccines will be widely available in the countries that need them most. This includes working with malaria-endemic countries and international institutions to align products with country requirements, to secure financing through current and new mechanisms, and to integrate plans for vaccine delivery into existing global and national systems.
In 2001, MVI and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) entered into a public-private partnership to advance the development of GSK’s RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate for pediatric use in sub-Saharan Africa. The partnership has since expanded to include African research centers and world-class African researchers who lead the Phase 3 trials on the ground. To date, RTS,S has demonstrated that it can provide significant protection for young children and infants against the most deadly species of the malaria parasite—Plasmodium falciparum. A Phase 2 study in Ghana, Tanzania, and Gabon, indicated that the vaccine may reduce by half the number of episodes of clinical malaria children suffer over the course of 19 months. RTS,S is currently being evaluated in a pivotal Phase 3 efficacy trial in 11 different research centers across sub-Saharan Africa. If approved for use, RTS,S will be the first malaria vaccine ever developed and will have the potential to protect the health of millions of children.
MVI is also researching vaccines that block the transmission of malaria parasites from humans to mosquitoes. Transmission-blocking vaccines would not directly prevent people from getting malaria, but they could significantly limit the spread of infection.
MVI is part of the global effort to roll back malaria and achieve the targets set forth in the Global Malaria Action Plan. MVI’s work also aligns with the goals of the Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap of 2006, which calls for the development of a first-generation malaria vaccine by 2015 and a second-generation malaria vaccine by 2025.
Global efforts over the last decade have contributed to dramatic declines in malaria-related illness and death. MVI is focusing on developing vaccines to help eventually eradicate this deadly disease and achieve a world free from malaria.