A single dose of an antibody drug provided strong protection against malaria infections during the six-month rainy season in Mali, an international team of researchers announced [October 31]. The promising result, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, lays the groundwork for a new tool to help defeat a parasitic disease that last year killed more than 600,000 people — mostly children.
The experimental drug, CIS43LS, proved 88 percent effective in preventing malaria infections in healthy adults — a tantalizing proof of principle that such an approach could have a powerful impact.
The study opens up a whole new class of drugs to tackle malaria, a disease that is caused by a parasite in the saliva of infected mosquitoes. A team at the National Institutes of Health isolated a parasite-blocking antibody from the blood of a volunteer who was given an experimental malaria vaccine, then tweaked the antibody so that it would stick around in the blood and offer protection for months at a time.
The NIH team — partnering with researchers at the Mali International Center for Excellence in Research, which is at the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako, Mali — subjected the drug to an intense test for malaria prevention: the rainy season. That period begins in June, with transmission peaking in October.
