Malaria Vaccine Development: The Need for Novel Approaches: A Review Article

BACKGROUND: Although rigorous efforts have substantially decreased the malaria burden through decades, it still threatens the lives of millions of children. Development of an effective vaccine can provide important approach in malaria control strategies. Unfortunately, development of an effective vaccine for falciparum malaria has been hindered by the extreme complexity of malaria parasite biology, complex and diverse parasite genomes, and immune evasion by the parasites as well as the intricate nature of the parasites infection cycle. The aim of this review was to discuss the different approaches to malaria vaccine development until now. METHODS: Scientific databases, including MEDLINE (via PubMed) and SCOPUS were searched up to 30 Jan 2017 and the articles regarding malaria vaccine development were taken into examination. RESULTS: Several strategies for malaria vaccine development including pre-erythrocytic vaccines, antibody-based subunit vaccines, vectored vaccines, whole sporozoite vaccines, genetically Attenuated parasites and sporozoite subunit vaccine, erythrocytic vaccines, sexual stage vaccine, transmission-blocking vaccine as well as synthetic peptides and conjugate vaccine has been introduced. However, the success has been limited thus far. CONCLUSION: Although development of malaria vaccine over the past 70 year has been continued, the discovery, development, and licensing of a malaria vaccine formulation, which meets safety, affordability, accessibility, applicability, and efficacy has not yet been achieved.