Adult volunteers, who have never had malaria before, will undergo controlled infection with malaria three times in carefully monitored conditions. These serial “malaria challenges” will take place over a 20-month period and will allow researchers to compare the immune response to first, second and third infection. Over 600 people have previously participated in malaria challenge studies in Oxford, primarily in the context of malaria vaccine clinical trials. However, using repeated malaria challenges to study the human immune system in such close detail is a world first.
Dr Angela Minassian, Chief Investigator for the trial (University of Oxford), said: “Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite infection that is spread by mosquitoes. It continues to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year, 75% of which occur in children under the age of 5 years. Current efforts to control the disease are focussed on stopping mosquitoes from biting, either by spraying insecticides or sleeping under bed nets, and by reducing the number of parasites in the blood, using drugs or the recently licensed malaria vaccines, RTS,S and R21. However these measures are only partially effective”.