Mosquirix (RTS,S) / GSK - LARVOL DELTA

Status of Malaria Vaccine Introduction-Africa, 2019-2024. (PubMed, Am J Trop Med Hyg) - "There are two malaria vaccines prequalified by the WHO: RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M...During 2023-2024, a total of 13,250,098 vaccine doses were shipped to countries. The introduction of the malaria vaccine presents an integration opportunity with preventive health services to reduce child morbidity and mortality."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Progress in Malaria Prevention. (PubMed, Annu Rev Med) - "The licensure of two preerythrocytic vaccines, RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M, represents a major milestone, providing partial but meaningful protection against clinical malaria, especially when integrated with other control strategies...These developments underscore the importance of layered, context-specific malaria prevention strategies that integrate vaccines, chemoprevention, and vector control. Sustained innovation, funding, and implementation will be essential to accelerate progress toward malaria control and elimination."

Journal • Review • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Clinical efficacy, immunogenicity and safety of RTS,S/AS01, R21/Matrix-M and candidate malaria vaccines in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis. (PubMed, J Infect Public Health) - "Malaria vaccines in children show a favorable safety profile and provide meaningful although time-limited protection against clinical malaria. RTS,S and R21 vaccines achieve the highest efficacy particularly in combination with SMC. Malaria vaccination should be integrated into childhood malaria control strategies emphasizing the need for booster strategies and long-term effectiveness monitoring in endemic settings."

Journal • Retrospective data • Infectious Disease • Malaria • Pediatrics

Reducing Malaria-Related Under-Five Mortality in Nigeria Through Scalable Prevention and Treatment Strategies. (PubMed, Cureus) - "These recommendations aim to complement the current health system and improve access to effective malaria prevention and treatment. Their implementation could reduce malaria-related deaths among children under five and contribute to Nigeria's progress toward malaria control and elimination."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Malaria Vaccine Rollout in Nigeria: Current Status and Challenges. (PubMed, Am J Trop Med Hyg) - "The introduction of RTS,S/AS01, and R21/Matrix-M vaccines provides a promising complementary prevention strategy...Advocacy and social mobilization were at 0% across all three facilities, and monitoring and supervision ranged from 0% to 33%, all far below the WHO-recommended 95% threshold. Strengthening health systems, targeted communication, and sustainable public financing are essential for a successful nationwide malaria vaccine rollout."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Update on malaria vaccines deployment and challenges in the field. (PubMed, Clin Microbiol Infect) - "The roll-out of the first two malaria vaccines at large scale is progressing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, with 25 countries having introduced the vaccines in their routine immunization programs as of February 2026. However, current implementation challenges including funding constraints, manufacturing capacity, delivery strategies and vaccine hesitancy should be quickly addressed to gain significant impact in targeted populations. Next-generation vaccines might improve the protective efficacy and durability against clinical malaria and reduce the transmission activity of the vectors to support global elimination efforts."

Journal • Review • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Quantitative and Clinical Pharmacology Perspectives on Next-Generation Malaria Prevention Using Vaccines and Long-Acting Monoclonal Antibodies. (PubMed, Clin Transl Sci) - "Vaccines such as RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M induce active immunity through polyclonal antibody and CD4+ T-cell responses against the circumsporozoite protein (CSP), providing durable, population-level protection. In contrast, mAbs including CIS43LS and L9LS confer immediate, passive immunity, with protection directly linked to systemic exposure and duration above protective thresholds...This review emphasizes how quantitative PK/PD and PBPK modeling provide a framework to optimize dosing, predict durability of protection, and guide clinical development across diverse populations. These strategies underscore the value of model-informed translational pharmacology in accelerating development of next-generation malaria preventive interventions against malaria."

Journal • Review • Infectious Disease • Malaria • Pediatrics • CD4

Mapping stakeholders' positioning in the access and delivery partnership value chain: the case of the RTS,S malaria vaccine introduction in Ghana. (PubMed, Int J Public Health) - "There is an imbalance between Ghana's high demand for vaccines and its Research and Development (R&D) capacity, similar to other African countries. Enhancing upstream R&D capacity and fostering more inclusive stakeholder contributions could strengthen the pathway to new technologies adoption."

Journal • Licensing / partnership • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Overcoming immunogenic gaps in malaria subunit vaccines by broadening CSP regions targeted. (PubMed, J Exp Med) - "Finally, we demonstrated that vaccination combining the R21-included PfCSP epitope, the minimal minor repeat peptide, and a junctional region immunogen elicited balanced B cell and Ab responses, enhancing protection in vivo. Broadening responses through immunofocusing may overcome immunogenic gaps in current malaria vaccines."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Understanding malaria dynamics in Benin through time series, and environmental correlation: Implications for targeted interventions. (PubMed, PLOS Glob Public Health) - "The findings support the need for geographically and seasonally tailored malaria interventions and underscore the importance of considering environmental and demographic factors in malaria early warning and response systems. These results lay the groundwork for future modelling studies assessing the impact and cost-effectiveness of malaria control tools such as RTS,S and SMC at a sub-national level in Benin."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Why Not Now? Targeting Plasmodium falciparum histone methyltransferases for next-generation antimalarial strategies. (PubMed, Mol Biochem Parasitol) - "Although the pre-erythrocytic vaccines, Mosquirix and R21, are recommended only for children under five years of age in highly endemic African regions, their protective efficacy is moderate and wanes over time, underscoring the continued need for effective antimalarial drugs...While evaluating emerging epigenetic inhibitors as potential antimalarial agents. We further discuss the main challenges in developing such therapies, emphasizing the necessity of detailed structural characterization, optimized pharmacological properties and rigorous validation of candidate compounds across Plasmodium species to enable successful translation."

Journal • Review • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Who will pay for the malaria vaccines in Africa? (PubMed, Arch Public Health) - "The World Health Organization's endorsement of the RTS, S/AS01 vaccine in October 2021 and the R21/Matrix-M vaccine in October 2023 represents a major scientific advance; however, the central question confronting African policymakers, donors, and governments is no longer scientific but financial...Coordinated action by donors, governments, and manufacturers, including predictable multi-year financing, differential pricing, and measurable domestic allocations, is needed to prevent distribution by purchasing power rather than by epidemiological need. This comment aims to examine who will finance malaria vaccines in Africa and how equitable and sustainable delivery can be secured."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria • Novel Coronavirus Disease

Accessibility, safety, and early effect of the malaria vaccine in routine immunisation practice among children under 36 months in the Soa Health District, Cameroon. (PubMed, Trop Med Health) - "In this high-burden Cameroonian setting, two or more doses of RTS,S/AS01 were associated with a lower occurrence of malaria episodes favourable safety profile. Coverage remains suboptimal, and dropout is high. Ensuring free access and strengthening community awareness are critical for maximising vaccine uptake."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Awareness and acceptance of malaria vaccines by caregivers of under-5 children in Abia State, Nigeria: a mixed methods study. (PubMed, BMJ Public Health) - "The 2024 introduction of the R21/Matrix-M and RTS,S/AS01 vaccines offers promise, but evidence on caregiver awareness and acceptance in the non-pilot South-East region to inform equitable rollout is scarce...Based on our findings, caregivers demonstrated strong acceptance of malaria vaccines despite critically low awareness, a disparity fuelled by information gaps and socio-demographic inequities such as low education and rural residence that threaten vaccine rollout and malaria elimination goals. Consequently, this pioneering mixed-methods study recommends that specific channels that leverage primary healthcare centre providers and community leaders for information dissemination should be used, given the high levels of trust, to ensure malaria vaccine uptake and accelerate progress in reducing under-5 deaths."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Enhancing Disease Surveillance and Pharmacovigilance Practices for RTS,S/AS01E Malaria Vaccine Rollout in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi: Strategies, Impact, Challenges, and Lessons Learned. (PubMed, Drug Saf) - "This experience highlights the importance of tailored training, flexibility, collaboration, and prior alignment on integrating new tools into existing procedures. Overall, our approach may offer valuable insights for future pharmacovigilance capacity-building efforts in low- and middle-income countries to support safer vaccine rollout."

Adverse events • Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Epitope-selective vaccine designs to elicit protective antibodies against the Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite protein. (PubMed, NPJ Vaccines) - "Recently introduced malaria vaccines, RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M, are effective in preventing infection, but their efficacy declines over time...No construct was found to be superior to the clinical benchmark RTS,S/AS01 in the mouse model. These results can inform approaches to malaria vaccine design and direct future research."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Genotypic analysis of Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites in a clinical trial of RTS,S vaccination in combination with seasonal malaria chemoprevention. (PubMed, Malar J) - "While a comparable number of vaccinated individuals were genotyped in both studies, the infections in this study had less complex infections, leading to an overall lower number of parasite strains to analyze. These results suggest that the combination of vaccination with seasonal chemoprevention provides protection from infection, in addition to clinical disease, and they highlight the importance of continued molecular surveillance as malaria interventions are deployed."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Modeling time-varying efficacy of RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine across trial settings. (PubMed, NPJ Vaccines) - "Across settings with a sufficient number of episodes, the four-parameter model recovered an inverse-sigmoid pattern of RTS,S/AS01 protection over 18 months, with rapid early decline followed by stabilization at 20-40%. These findings show that modeling choices influence interpretation of vaccine protection and support the four-parameter approach as a parsimonious, biologically-interpretable parametric form for characterizing waning VE in the RTS,S/AS01 setting, with broader applicability across other vaccine platforms requiring further evaluation."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Healthcare workers' knowledge and acceptance of the malaria vaccine in the Nanoro Health District of Burkina Faso: a cross-sectional study. (PubMed, Malar J) - "Most HCWs were willing to vaccinate their children against malaria. However, few were hesitant due to insufficient information about the vaccine and more than one-fifth had limited knowledge about this specific vaccine. Training all HCWs on the MV (whether involved in EPI or not) and strengthening communication about it are essential to address concerns around the vaccine, and ensure sustained uptake in the community, thereby improving national vaccination coverage."

Journal • Observational data • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Structure and functional diversity of antibodies targeting the P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein C-terminal domain. (PubMed, bioRxiv) - "WHO-recommended vaccines RTS,S/AS01 E and R21/Matrix-M target the Pf CSP major repeat region and C-terminal domain (ctCSP)...In vitro, ctCSP mAbs promoted stronger Fc-receptor signaling, cellular cytotoxicity, and phagocytosis than repeat region mAbs, while mAb combinations targeting distinct Pf CSP epitopes modulated Fc-signaling and cellular cytotoxicity. This study provides a rationale for optimization of Pf CSP-based immunogens to enhance Fc-mediated contributions to malaria vaccine efficacy."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

A dual-antigen mRNA-lipid polyplex vaccine elicits durable multistage immunity and sterile protection against malaria in mice. (PubMed, Acta Pharmacol Sin) - "Mal05 therefore represents a promising next-generation vaccine candidate with the potential to achieve both pre-erythrocytic and blood-stage protection. More broadly, this work highlights the potential of LPP-based mRNA technology for developing multistage vaccines against complex parasitic pathogens."

Journal • Preclinical • Infectious Disease • Malaria • CD4 • CD8

The Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme reduced clinical malaria in Kenya, 2020 to 2022 : Impact evaluation with predictive time-series models of routine surveillance data. (PubMed, Malar J) - "This analysis revealed that routine health data, although age-aggregated to both vaccine eligible and noneligible children < 5 years, demonstrated a reduction in malaria cases throughout the evaluation period. A further reduction in cases was observed as more vaccine-eligible children comprised the under 5 population. High quality routine data can be used to monitor vaccine impact on clinical malaria."

Journal • Infectious Disease • Malaria

Advances in the development of malaria vaccines. (PubMed, BMJ) - "In Africa, where the burden of malaria is the highest, the implementation of the RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M vaccines through national Expanded Program on Immunization schedules is under way, underscoring the importance of community engagement and health system readiness while highlighting the need for next generation vaccines with greater durability and breadth. Achieving elimination of malaria requires improving current vaccine strategies, integrating novel technologies, and strengthening delivery mechanisms in endemic regions to overcome both biological and operational barriers."

Journal • Review • Infectious Disease • Malaria

To explore molecular targets and combination antimalarial chemotherapeutics as tissue and erythrocytic schizonticides. (PubMed, J Parasit Dis) - "It prevents the entry of sporozoite into hepatocytes by fusing the CSP with recombinant RTS, S protein Surface other antimalarial drugs that target the Erythrocytic stage are Quinine, Chloroquine, Amodiaquine, Mefloquine, Hydroxyethylamines. These either prevent the detoxification or invasion inside RBC or kill the parasite. Several combinations antimalarial chemotheraputics like ELQ300, MMV019066 are also used for the full reduction of parasite from the body."

Journal • Review • CNS Disorders • Infectious Disease • Malaria • Psychiatry • Schizophrenia

Bivalent virus-like particles expressing SPECT1 and CSP trigger pre-erythrocytic malaria immunity and protect against transgenic Plasmodium falciparum sporozoite challenge in mice. (PubMed, Front Immunol) - "The decline in protective antibody titers and efficacy over time of the circumsporozoite protein (CSP)-based RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M vaccines highlights the need for improved vaccines...Our findings show that PfSPECT-1 can be effectively incorporated into the HBsAg VLPs and co-displayed with CSP epitopes without impairing immunogenicity. Although protection was evaluated using transgenic P. berghei parasites expressing P. falciparum antigens, the modular HBsAg VLP platform theoretically allows incorporation of antigens from other Plasmodium species such as P. vivax."

Journal • Preclinical • Hepatitis B • Infectious Disease • Inflammation • Malaria