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March 29, 2002

U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Sequencing of the Malaria Genome Opens Door to Vaccines and New Drugs" Journal of the American Medical Association Online (www.jama.com)

(03/13/02) Vol. 287, No. 10,; Stephenson, Joan

At the Second Conference on Microbial Genomes, co-sponsored by the American Society of Microbiology and the Institute for Genomic Research, researchers announced that their six-year effort to sequence all 6,000 genes of the Plasmodium falciparum genome is beginning to pay off as researchers are using the information to develop a malaria vaccine.  The parasite is becoming more resistant to traditional drugs, and without a vaccine the disease could eventually spread to nonendemic areas, says Smith College Biological Sciences professor Steven Williams. Once sequencing of the genome is completed, researchers will have new drug targets and the possibility to discover a vaccine. Although finished details are expected in a scientific journal this summer, preliminary details published on Web sites is leading to revolutionary advances, such as antibiotic fosmidomycin that managed to cure mice infected with a rodent form of malaria.  Developing a vaccine to prevent malaria is more important that finding new malaria treatments due to lack of a health care infrastructure in Africa and Asia and high costs of prescription drugs.  Stephen L. Hoffman of Celera Genomics believes much work is left to be done before a malaria vaccine is on the market, and that work must be cooperative and include international researchers in order to be effective.

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