London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The School has a long heritage in malaria research and is home to the Malaria Centre, which has the largest number of malaria researchers, students and support staff in Europe.  Staff in the UK and Africa have been involved in the development of the RTS,S vaccine and the international partnership which led to these results.

Professor Brian Greenwood, who has contributed to the project and co-authored the paper detailing the results, said:  “The School is pleased to have been able to contribute in various ways to the success of this important trial of the malaria vaccine RTS,S. The interim results of this trial confirm the efficacy of this vaccine in infants and older children and take it a further step along the road to becoming the first malaria vaccine to be licensed and used in public health programs. We now have confirmation of its promise as a potentially valuable tool in malaria control.”

Another co-author, Professor David Schellenberg, who supports PATH’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative in the development of RTS,S, said: “The results are certainly good news, but rather than a final destination, they represent an important milestone. The development of a vaccine is a long process, taking decades of work and costing millions of pounds; these encouraging data confirm that we’ve gone a very long way down the path of this vaccine’s development and remain firmly on track. At the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, we look forward to continuing to support the next, crucial steps of this vaccine’s evaluation.”

Dr Chris Drakeley, who is Director of the Malaria Centre at LSHTM and also involved in the project, said: “This is another important step along the way to the development and deployment of an effective malaria vaccine. Work continues on target and it is important that we evaluate progress regularly and share the news with the scientific community and world at large. It is continued reward for all of those who conducted, coordinated and funded the work thus far.”

All three are in Seattle this week at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Malaria Forum, a high-level meeting of government, industry and science leaders to discuss progress and challenges in the malaria field.