New malaria vaccine developed

A new malaria vaccine has been developed by a British pharmaceutical and healthcare company with Malawi producing one of the 13 African research centres in eight sub-Saharan Africa nations that conducted trial programme.

Other African countries where the trial was conducted include Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania. Malawi’s College of Medicine hosted the trial.

Known by its scientific name RTS,S, the vaccine has been developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies and is under assessment by European Medicines Agency (EMA) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

GSK said in a statement issued yesterday, RTS,S is intended exclusively for use against the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite, currently most prevalent in sub-Saharan nations which include Malawi.

About 90 percent of the estimated deaths from malaria occur in sub-Saharan nations and 77 percent of them are in children under the age of five.

“GSK has submitted a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency [EMA] for its malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S,” said GSK in the statement.

The submission will follow Article 58 procedure, which allows EMA to assess the quality, safety and efficacy of a candidate vaccine or medicine manufactured in a European Union (EU) member State, for a disease recognised by the WHO as of major public health interest, but intended exclusively for use outside the EU.

GSK said the EMA submission is the first step in the regulatory process towards making the RTS,S vaccine candidate available as an addition to existing tools currently recommended for malaria prevention.