The National Institutes of Health of the United States (NIH, for its acronym in English) -report some local media- recognized the work of Colombian scientists Myriam Arévalo and Sócrates Herrera, who have been developing in Cali, for years, a vaccine against the malaria.
The biological, which is called PvCS, is designed to prevent parasite infection Plasmodium vivax, one of the most common and dangerous that cause the disease.
So far the vaccine has shown a 60% efficiency, however, he still has a long way to go.
The next part of the process, which will take place in the department of Chocó (because it is the territory that concentrates the largest number of patients with the disease), involves apply it in a small group of volunteers (at least 100).
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“We seek to test the vaccine in people who have had malaria and that is why we will carry out the study in Chocó (which concentrates about 32% of cases nationwide). What do we expect? That the results already obtained in this first trial are reproducible and desirably improvable. That to the extent that people have already had this disease and have some advanced immunity, it can reinforce it and improve levels,” the scientist and immunologist Herrera told Caracol Radio.
The vaccine has three doses which should be applied with intervals of 2 to 4 months. The results of the phase that begins at the end of this year would be by mid-2023.
At the end of 2021, the World Health Organization recommended, for the first time in history, to extend the use of one of the vaccines that are applied as pilots in high-incidence areas. His name: RTS, S, aimed at preventing infection with Plasmodium falciparum.
The development of a biologic like this has been difficult for different reasons, among them, that there are five parasites (transmitted by mosquitoes) that can cause the disease, in addition to being very complex microorganisms that have many proteins, changing, in their outer membrane.
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