Protective immunity against malaria after vaccination

Abstract

SUMMARYA good understanding of the immunological correlates of protective immunity is an important requirement for the development of effective vaccines against malaria. However, this concern has received little attention even in the face of two decades of intensive vaccine research. Here, we review the immune response to blood-stage malaria, with a particular focus on the type of vaccine most likely to induce the kind of response required to give strong protection against infection.

Immunogenicity of a plasmid DNA vaccine encoding 42 kDa fragment of Plasmodium vivax merozoite surface protein-1

“…This type of responses, i.e., the activation of both Th1 and Th2 cells, is considered ideal for a blood-stage vaccine (Petritus and Burns, 2008;de Souza, 2014). Our findings on DNA prime/protein boosting have also indicated that among the DNA immunized groups, priming with DNA and boosting with protein clearly elevated the levels of all the cytokine in DNA/Protein group suggesting that DNA can prime the mice but itself is not sufficient enough to enhance the immune responses.…”

“…In the present study, priming with P. Previous studies have shown that cell mediated immune responses, in addition to antibody responses, are required for protection against malaria Sedegah et al, 1998;de Souza, 2014). Present study on measuring T cell responses in mice after DNA immunization and protein boosting exhibited that T cell proliferation was significantly enhanced in DNA/Protein and Protein/Protein groups.…”

“…Asexual blood-stage (erythrocytic) vaccines are aimed to primarily protect against severe malaria disease (Carvalho et al, 2002;Kaushal et al, 2009;De Souza, 2014). The most important asexual blood stage vaccines are based on the use of merozoite surface protein-1 (MSP1), which is part of a complex molecule involved in red blood cell invasion (Holder et al, 1992;Ling et al, 1994;Good et al 2005).…”

“…IFN- and IL-2 are correlated with the protection against malaria parasites as high levels of IFN- can inhibit the parasite development, prevent re-infection and provide protection against clinical malaria (Petritus and Burns, 2008;D'Ombrain et al, 2008;Roestenberg et al, 2009;Sauerwein, 2010, de Souza, 2014). Roles of IFN- and IL-12 cytokines have been studied in mouse malaria infection and the cytokine gene knockout mice were unable to control P. chabaudi infection (Stevenson et al, 1995;de Souza, 2014). IL-12 has been shown to play an important role in antibody mediated protective immunity against blood stages of P. chabaudi (Su and Stevenson, 2002) and in defence against P. falciparum infection in humans (Malaguarnera et al, 2002).…”

Malaria invasion ligand RH5 and its prime candidacy in blood-stage malaria vaccine design

“…The main challenges to a blood stage vaccine development include, but are not limited to, selecting an antigen that is both essential and elicits a strong, protective immune response, yet is not so diverse that immunity to only the vaccine strain would develop, and presenting the antigen to the host immune system with a sufficiently immunogenic but safe vaccine adjuvant, the availability and suitability of animal models, as well as gaps in our knowledge of the nature of antimalarial immunity and how it is acquired. 109,110 The malaria antigen RH5 described in this review may well live up to this challenge. …”