A team of Navy and civilian researchers lately formed a partnership to expand the Navy's malaria vaccine unfolding program.

The Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) and GenVec a biopharmaceutical company, signed a two-year cooperative research agreement to disentangle and evaluate potential new vaccines. The Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is providing major funding.

"This is a natural follow-on to our molecular vaccine progressive growth program," said Dr. Denise Doolan, head of the NMRC Malaria Program's pre-clinical research and unfolding efforts. "This agreement represents a unique partnership of rule industry and the public sector."

"Malaria is a serious threat to squads stationed in endemic areas," said Doolan. "In all conflicts during the past centenary conducted in malaria-endemic areas, malaria has been the leading cause of casualties, exceeding enemy-inflicted casualties in its impact in succession person-days lost from duty.

"This was highlighted according to the deployment of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Liberia last year where there were casualty rates of 28 to 44 percent for partys with as little as 10 days of aspect to the malaria parasite," she added.

The effort brings together NMRC's expertise in malaria and vaccine disentanglement and GenVec's unique vaccine delivery regularity Using a laboratory model, Navy researchers will proof several vaccines that include a combination of specific proteins press outed in different stages of the malaria parasite's complicate life cycle.

The parasite's genome contains more than 5300 proteins," said Doolan. "We are looking at five of those proteins in this subject of attention Three are expressed in the liver-stage of the parasite, and couple others are expressed in the family stage."

The goal of these multi-stage vaccines is to impede infection or decrease the clinical symptoms of the disease. Succes in this effort is awaited to lead to future clinical studies in humans.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 million deaths from malaria befall worldwide each year, with 90 percent in Africa, southward of the Sahara. An effective vaccine will be an essential uncompounded body in the fight against malaria, since the parasite continues to disclose resistance to anti-malarial drugs, and the mosquitoes lay open resistance to insecticides.

Story on Doris M. Ryan, who is assigned to the public affairs office, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Washington, DC

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