A Shot of Antibodies Could Make You Impervious to Malaria
Methods for preventing malaria infections range from the low-tech, like mosquito bed nets and getting rid of standing water; to the uncannily high-tech, like genetically engineering sterile male mosquitoes and introducing them for population control. The World Health Organization approved a vaccine called Mosquirix in October 2021, but the shot is only 30 percent effective at preventing cases of severe malaria.
A new player may soon be entering the field: monoclonal antibodies, a lab-grown treatment that has shown promise for a wide variety of conditions, including cancer and COVID-19. Results from a phase 1 clinical trial published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that infusions and injections of a monoclonal antibody tailor-made for malaria are safe, and offer hints that the treatment could be highly effective.
“Monoclonal antibodies are an incredibly safe intervention,” study senior author Robert Seder, the Cellular Immunology Section chief at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Daily Beast. Unlike other interventions that can depend on a person’s age or ethnic background, “the beauty of the antibody is it should work across all ages, and it's probably not going to be affected by how old you are, or where you live, or what you've experienced.”
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