Essential Medicines News

“Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, PATH To Open Vaccine Center To Expedite Malaria Vaccine Testing,” Kaisernetwork.org, 6 March 2008.

The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI) have plans to establish the Human Challenge Center to test the safety and efficacy of malaria vaccine candidates for human use. Ken Stuart, SBRI’s President and Founder, describes the center’s mission:

We see an opportunity here to provide the entire malaria vaccine research community with additional capacity for testing the many exciting approaches to fighting this disease that are being developed not just at SBRI, but by scientists around the world.

Our role is to help the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative continue to stock the malaria vaccine pipeline with a large cadre of strong candidates backed by hard evidence of their potential effectiveness.

The center hopes to recruit 100 to 200 volunteers each year who will be vaccinated and then deliberately exposed to malaria-infected mosquitoes. Only three other labs in the world are currently conducting similar experiments.

Links to popular press:
Sandi Doughton, “You Can Get Paid to Catch Malaria,” The Seattle Times, 5 March 2008.

“PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute Accelerate Search for Malaria Vaccine by Expanding ‘Human Challenge’ Tests,” Malaria Vaccine Initiative Press Release, 5 March 2008.