 in late September. The Oxford team believe their shot is the 'best yet' to combat a disease that still kills more than 600,000 people a year – the vast majority children under five in Africa. 'This is a big moment,' Prof Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, told the Telegraph at the time. 'In many ways, it's the biggest yet.' The team is applying for prequalification status for R21, which would pave the way for the shot to be rolled out in malaria hotspots across the globe. Already 20 million doses are sitting in crates in a refrigerated warehouse in Pune, India, ready to ship should the WHO give the go ahead. The vaccine would become only the second jab approved to tackle the ancient killer, which has been a notoriously difficult adversary due to the malaria parasite's complicated life cycle and its ability to avoid detection by the immune system. Well over 100 candidates have been trialled, but last October – after 35 years of development and $200 million –){kind=link}
After decades of work and countless setbacks, researchers believe this shot is the best yet to fight the disease – critics aren’t convinced
The severed head of the mosquito loomed large under the lens of the microscope. At a nondescript lab on the outskirts of Oxford, scientists were dissecting the tiny insects to reach the malaria-carrying parasites lurking inside.
“We just gently pull the head off, and hopefully the salivary gland – where the parasite lives – comes with it,” said Prof Katie Ewer, a professor of vaccine immunology at the Jenner Institute, pointing at the eyelash-shaped gland on the glass slide.
Over the following 48 hours the minuscule parasites extracted faced a new adversary: vials of blood gathered from the participants of a malaria vaccine trial in Kenya.
The experiment – which aimed to test the antibody response triggered by the vaccine, known as R21 – was yet another piece of data the Oxford academics were pulling together ahead of a critical deadline.