Identification and validation of immune correlates of protection against malaria infection

• Main Author: Lee, Qian Qi
• Other Authors: Laurent Rénia
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Science::Biological sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78850
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Current intervening approaches against malaria are insufficient to eradicate malaria. Hence, a new vaccine which can induce long-lasting sterile protection against malaria needs to be developed. Immunisation with live sporozoites under mefloquine or chloroquine drug cover can induce protection in human volunteers who were challenged with sporozoites experimentally. We compared between the two differential sets of serum, taken from protected and non-protected individuals who had undergone the immunisation regime, to identify antigens which could be used for vaccine development. We screened 7 antigens and 5 of the antigens screened were not associated with protection. In the chloroquine chemoprophylaxis group, serum response was observed in 1/3 protected volunteers and none in the non-protected volunteers for blood stage antigens MSP2 and RHOPH3. Further works need to be done to validate the correlation between MSP2 and RHOPH3 with protection due to the small sample size.