Gene research brings malaria vaccine closer

By CHARLES ARTHUR

LONDON - New vaccines to eradicate malaria came a step closer yesterday as scientists unveiled the genomes of the parasite that causes the disease and the mosquito which transmits it.

Together with information extracted from the human genome, researchers will now seek ways to use the knowledge of the genes essential to each organism to try to find new treatments, targets and strategies to deal with the disease, which kills up to 2.7 million people every year and threatens 40 per cent of the world's population.

But they warned that it would take money and commitment from pharmaceutical companies and governments and that it would not be an overnight solution.

Brian Greenwood, professor of tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "Current attempts to control malaria with drugs and insecticides are in danger of failing because of the problems of resistance, and there is no immediate prospect of a vaccine.

"It will be a little while before the knowledge provided by the genome projects is translated into practical tools but this will happen, and malaria will finally be brought under control."

Robert Sinden, professor of parasite cell biology at Imperial College London, who contributed to the parasite research, said the real challenge was for governments and pharmaceutical companies to show that they were prepared to invest the money to control malaria.

The papers detailing the genomes of the parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, appear this week in Nature and Science.

Falciparum is one of four species of malaria which infect humans, and one of the two which causes the greatest number of deaths.

Malaria is spread when a mosquito bites an infected person, ingests the parasite and then bites another person; it then spreads to the liver where it breeds, and then infects the red blood cells, from which mosquitoes can pick it up again.

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