A Shot of Antibodies Could Make You Impervious to Malaria
upstart writes:
The new treatment was 80 to 100 percent effective in a phase 1 trial:
Methods for preventing malaria infections range from the low-tech, like mosquito bed nets and getting rid of standing water; to the uncannily high-tech, like genetically engineering sterile male mosquitoes and introducing them for population control. The World Health Organization approved a vaccine called Mosquirix in October 2021, but the shot is only 30 percent effective at preventing cases of severe malaria.
A new player may soon be entering the field: monoclonal antibodies, a lab-grown treatment that has shown promise for a wide variety of conditions, including cancer and COVID-19. Results from a phase 1 clinical trial published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that infusions and injections of a monoclonal antibody tailor-made for malaria are safe, and offer hints that the treatment could be highly effective.
[...] Still, it's too early to say how much of a game changer this treatment could be-in part because practical constraints could make it difficult to deliver monoclonal antibody treatments to those in need. "The current trial included intravenous administration, which is appropriate in an experimental setting but of questionable use in the field," malaria researchers Timothy Wells and Cristina Donini wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. The cost of the treatment is another consideration, though current estimates put the antibodies' price within a similar range as the vaccine.
[...] "Elimination is the aspiration," he said.
Journal Reference:
Richard L. Wu, Azza H. Idris, Nina M. Berkowitz, et al., Low-Dose Subcutaneous or Intravenous Monoclonal Antibody to Prevent Malaria [open], N Engl J Med, 2022. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2203067
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