Roll out and prospects of the malaria vaccine R21/Matrix-M

Abstract

More than a century passed between the discovery of Plasmodium, the pathogen causing malaria, and the invention of the first robust malaria vaccine, RTS,S, in the 1980s. RTS,S consists of the circumsporozoite protein (CSP) of the sporozoite stage of Plasmodium falciparum antigen on a Hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HbsAg) backbone and is given as a course of 3 monthly doses with a booster 12 months after the third dose. It took another 30 years until RTS,S, with the adjuvant AS01, was licensed and prequalified by the World Health Organization (WHO). RTS,S/AS01 is currently owned and produced by the multinational pharmaceutical company Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK).

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