The vaccine would be using the same breakthrough mRNA
technology which is at the core of Covid-19 vaccines to help fight the
mosquito-borne disease, which kills more than 400,000 people every year, mainly
young children in Africa.
Scientists believe mRNA vaccines, which provoke an immune
response by delivering genetic molecules containing the code for key parts of a
pathogen into human cells, could be a game-changer against many diseases.
They also take less time to develop than traditional
vaccines.
This project has been applauded and is backed by the Africa
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the EU and the World
Health Organisation.
"mRNA technology is helping us to save lives from
Covid-19 and diseases that we have only known about for 19 months. Malaria has
been with us for millenia. Eradicating it has been a long-held but unattainable
dream," WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commented on
the vaccine project.
"We still have a very long road to travel but this is
an ambitious and purposeful stride down that road. WHO remains committed to
walking and working with you, our partners, until we reach our destination: a
world free of malaria," Dr. Terdos added.
BioNTech said it was also looking at setting up an mRNA hub
in Africa, so that future vaccines can be manufactured and distributed on the
continent.
A project, that will surely help in the fight against the
terrible disease, as many hope to eradicate malaria in this generation.
"We are witnessing the start of a revolution in medical
science, the revolution of messenger RNA," European Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen said at Monday's online launch event.
"Eradicating malaria is now a realistic goal and now we
know that it can be achieved already in this generation," the EU
Commission President stressed.
In a conference call with reporters, BioNTech CEO Ugur
Sahinsaid he believed BioNTech's malaria efforts have "a high likelihood
for success".
The fight against malaria received a boost in April when
researchers from Britain's Oxford University announced that their Matrix-M
vaccine candidate had become the first to surpass the WHO's threshold of
75-percent efficacy, in a study on infants in Burkina Faso.
A large-scale, final stage trial is ongoing.