Pharmaceutical Science and Technology

Special Issue

Vaccines to Combat Malaria

  • Submission Deadline: Jan. 30, 2017
  • Status: Submission Closed
  • Lead Guest Editor: Jill Shukla
About This Special Issue
Malaria continues to pose a tremendous public health burden for people living in the tropical region, particularly in Asian and African countries. Globally, approximately 300 to 500 million people are infected annually, which is more than 40% of the global population and it causes more than 2 million deaths each year. Malarial parasites have complex life cycles and distinct developmental stages, each of which has multiple antigens that could serve as targets of an immune response. A pre erythrocytic vaccine would protect against the infectious form injected by a sporozoite and/ or inhibit parasite development in the liver. An erythrocytic or blood stage vaccine would inhibit would inhibit parasite multiplication in the red cells, thus preventing or diminishing severe disease during blood infection. An optimal vaccine would have the ability to elicit protective immunity that blocks infection as well as prevents pathology and interrupt stransmission of parasites. To date most effort of vaccines development has focused on p. falciparum for the reasons like: High mortality from infection, capability for experimental challenges, relative ease of in-vitro studies and availability of animal models for in-vivo studies. Some important achievements have been made in past few years, which will contribute significantly to malaria control. They include exploitation of p. falciparum, A. gambiae and human genomes. Also, development of new drugs, new vaccine candidates, development and implementation of combinational therapies, intermittent preventive treatment and home management of malaria. These challenges will only be alleviated, and control strategies achieve maximum impact, if additional resources are deployed to strengthen malaria research and control communities in countries where the new tools will be used. Continued and sustained efforts are needed to develop control tools through research and development in partnership.

Lead Guest Editor
  • Jill Shukla

    Department of Pharmaceutics, Gujarat Technological University, bardoli, India