Cell Host & Microbe
Volume 17, Issue 1, 14 January 2015, Pages 130-139
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Article
A PfRH5-Based Vaccine Is Efficacious against Heterologous Strain Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum Infection in Aotus Monkeys

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2014.11.017Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Vaccines based on the P. falciparum merozoite antigen PfRH5 were tested in Aotus monkeys

  • PfRH5-based vaccines afforded protection against heterologous strains of P. falciparum

  • Protection correlated with anti-PfRH5 IgG concentration and in vivo neutralization

Summary

Antigenic diversity has posed a critical barrier to vaccine development against the pathogenic blood-stage infection of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. To date, only strain-specific protection has been reported by trials of such vaccines in nonhuman primates. We recently showed that P. falciparum reticulocyte binding protein homolog 5 (PfRH5), a merozoite adhesin required for erythrocyte invasion, is highly susceptible to vaccine-inducible strain-transcending parasite-neutralizing antibody. In vivo efficacy of PfRH5-based vaccines has not previously been evaluated. Here, we demonstrate that PfRH5-based vaccines can protect Aotus monkeys against a virulent vaccine-heterologous P. falciparum challenge and show that such protection can be achieved by a human-compatible vaccine formulation. Protection was associated with anti-PfRH5 antibody concentration and in vitro parasite-neutralizing activity, supporting the use of this in vitro assay to predict the in vivo efficacy of future vaccine candidates. These data suggest that PfRH5-based vaccines have potential to achieve strain-transcending efficacy in humans.

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This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).