An effective vaccine against malaria is not only possible but likely.

The Malaria Vaccine Initiative works to accelerate vaccine development

Imagine a world free from malaria. It looks like this: countless families in Africa are spared the devastating loss of a child. Communities suffer less. Economies produce more.

Hope is driving our search for a malaria vaccine. Innovative partnerships and breakthrough science are helping us find one.

About the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative

The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) is working to accelerate the development of malaria vaccines and get them where they’re needed—for example, to sub-Saharan Africa, where close to a million children a year die from Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous malaria parasite.

Our vaccine-development activities include evaluating vaccine candidates—supporting the development of promising candidates and weeding out those that no longer seem viable, to narrow the pipeline and focus resources. Our support to promising candidates includes conducting clinical trials. In addition, we are working to prepare the way for introducing a malaria vaccine into immunization programs, once one is available.

Innovative partnerships

Where traditional market forces have not been strong enough to drive the development of a malaria vaccine, we’re providing leverage in the form of human, financial, and technical resources that will make this lifesaving health intervention a reality. We work with government, academic, and industry partners to explore multiple vaccine concepts simultaneously and to systematically move the most promising candidates through the development process. Through these partnerships that span both the public and private sectors, we maintain a portfolio of preclinical, early clinical, and at least one advanced clinical project.

Visit the MVI website to learn more about vaccine research and development and see our portfolio.

Breakthrough science

RTS,S is the world's most advanced malaria vaccine candidate. Learn more about it in this video.

What many once thought was impossible—developing a vaccine for a parasite—is now likely. In 2008, a trial we supported indicated that GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals’ RTS,S—the world’s most clinically advanced malaria vaccine candidate—provides both infants and young children with significant protection, including 53 percent efficacy against clinical malaria.

This recent success means that PATH and our partners are on track to accomplish an important goal of the malaria community: to license, by 2015, a first-generation vaccine that protects more than half of inoculated children against severe malaria for more than one year.

Read more about our research and development strategies on the MVI website.

Paving the way for a vaccine

With a malaria vaccine moving so close to reality, we’re also working with the World Health Organization and countries in Africa to ensure that a successful vaccine can be used as soon as it is approved. Last year, 30 countries adopted a framework that we developed to help policymakers make decisions on malaria vaccine use. And we publicly launched an advocacy fellowship program to train malaria researchers from several countries as “policy champions” who can advocate for critical support that will bring a successful vaccine directly to the children who need it.

Read more about our advocacy efforts and the Malaria Vaccine Advocacy Fellowship on the MVI website.

Photos, from top: PATH, John-Michael Maas/Darby Communications.