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Worldwide, malaria is a major cause of premature death, particularly among children. Progress on a vaccine has been disappointing. A multi-institutional team took advantage of molecular technologies to find a new vaccine target.
The team identified a group of children who had never contracted malaria despite living in an area of Africa that is endemic for malaria and a group of children of the same age, sex, and village who had contracted malaria in the past. Children who were resistant to malaria had persistent serum antibodies against a protein (called PfSEA-1); susceptible children did not have these antibodies. Immunization of mice with the PfSEA-1 protein greatly reduced the pathogenicity of a lethal dose of the malaria parasite, someth…