Malaria vaccine approachesleveraging technologiesoptimized in the COVID-19 era

Abstract

Africa bears the greatest burden of malaria with more than 200 million clinicalcases and more than 600,000 deaths in 2020 alone. While malaria-associateddeaths dropped steadily until 2015, the decline started to falter after 2016,highlighting the need for novel potent tools in thefight against malaria.Currently available tools, such as antimalarial drugs and insecticides arethreatened by development of resistance by the parasite and the mosquito.The WHO has recently approved RTS,S as thefirst malaria vaccine for publichealth use. However, because the RTS,S vaccine has an efficacy of only 36% inyoung children, there is need for more efficacious vaccines. Indeed, based onthe global goal of licensing a malaria vaccine with at least 75% efficacy by 2030,RTS,S is unlikely to be sufficient alone. However, recent years have seentremendous progress in vaccine development. Although the COVID-19pandemic impacted malaria control, the rapid progress in research towardsthe development of COVID-19 vaccines indicate that harnessing funds andtechnological advances can remarkably expedite vaccine development. In thisreview, we highlight and discuss current and prospective trends in global effortsto discover and develop malaria vaccines through leveraging mRNA vaccineplatforms and other systems optimized during COVID-19 vaccine studies.