Final-stage trial data released on Tuesday showed it gave protection against clinical and severe malaria in 5- to 17-month-olds in Africa, where the mosquito-borne disease kills hundreds of thousands of children a year.
"These data bring us to the cusp of having the world's first malaria vaccine," said Andrew Witty, chief executive of the British drugmaker that developed the vaccine along with the non-profit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI).
While hailing an unprecedented achievement, Witty, malaria scientists and global health experts stressed that the vaccine—known as RTS,S or Mosquirix—was no quick fix for eradicating malaria. The new shot is less effective than others against common infections like polio and measles.
"We would have wished that we could wipe it out, but I think this is going to contribute to the control of malaria rather than wiping it out," Tsiri Agbenyega, a principal investigator in the RTS,S trials in Ghana, told Reuters at a conference in Seattle about the disease.
