Developing a vaccine against malaria has been difficult and no clinical trial has yet resulted in inducing robust protection against the disease.

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The blood-stage malaria antigen PfRH5 has been shown to be a promising candidate. The ExpreS2 platform was the only protein expression platform of all those tested that delivered on the requirements: the protein was produced with yields compatible with the needs for vaccine production and, most importantly, the ExpreS2 platform is cGMP compatible.

antigen-screening

Antigen screening

The ExpreS2ion team is working with the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, UK, in variant selection, process development and transfer to cGMP production for clinical Phase I.

Further reading about PfRH5 research:

  • Alexander D. Douglas, Andrew R. Williams, Joseph J. Illingworth, Gathoni Kamuyu, Sumi Biswas, Anna L. Goodman, David H. Wyllie, Cécile Crosnier, Kazutoyo Miura, Gavin J. Wright, Carole A. Long, Faith H. Osier, Kevin Marsh, Alison V. Turner, Adrian V.S. Hill & Simon J. Draper. The blood-stage malaria antigen PfRH5 is susceptible to vaccine-inducible cross-strain neutralizing antibody. Nature Communications 2, Article number: 601. PubMed
  • Andrew R. Williams, Alexander D. Douglas, Kazutoyo Miura, Joseph J. Illingworth, Prateek Choudhary, Linda M. Murungi, Julie M. Furze, Ababacar Diouf, Olivo Miotto, Cécile Crosnier, Gavin J. Wright, Dominic P. Kwiatkowski, Rick M. Fairhurst, Carole A. Long, Simon J. Draper (2012) Enhancing Blockade of Plasmodium falciparum Erythrocyte Invasion: Assessing Combinations of Antibodies against PfRH5 and Other Merozoite Antigens. PLoS Pathog 8(11): e1002991. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1002991. PubMed