Defining epitopes of Plasmodium vivax RBP that are potential vaccine targets

Plasmodium vivax is the leading cause of malaria outside of Africa, with over 100 million clinical cases annually. Increasing reports of clinical severity of vivax malaria due to emergence of more virulent and drug resistance forms of the parasite, the ability of the parasite to undergo relapse in the liver and the strain specific nature of the immunity to P. vivax infections has contributed in making control more difficult. There is therefore an urgent need for a vaccine to control the disease. Merozoite invasion of human erythrocytes is essential for blood stage development of malaria parasites. P. vivax has a selective preference for infecting reticulocytes, a process mediated by the reticulocyte binding proteins (RBPs), which target reticulocytes for invasion. This essential role in the invasion process makes RBPs ideal targets for vaccine development induced against blood stage P. vivax. We hypothesize that an effective RBP based vaccine will require targeting the functionally conserved receptor-binding domains of multiple RBPs. The large size of the RBPs makes it difficult to produce correctly refolded recombinant proteins using the traditional expression systems. Refolded proteins may surfer from poor immunogenicity due to ineffective presentation of protective epitopes. Thus, it is difficult to induce a strong, high-titer response to all potential epitopes. Usually, immunodominant epitopes, which in most part are polymorphic, do not necessarily correspond to the most effective neutralizing epitopes. 

NIH Reporter - Project Details

Enabling Technologies & Assays
P. vivax
Vaccines (Immune Correlates)

Aug 2014 — Jul 2016

$411,125

United States

mAbs for malaria vaccine development
Towards a vaccine for Plasmodium vivax