Development of a virosomal malaria subunit vaccine

• Research unit: TPH
• Project number: 2.01

Key words (English)

Malaria subunit vaccine, virosomal delivery system

Short description (English)

Synthetic mimotopes of key malaria vaccine candidate antigens are designed and hooked to reconstituted influenza virus particles (virosomes) as antigen delivery system. Sera of im-munised animals are evaluated for the presence of parasite binding and inhibitory antibodies. After the identification of lead structures mimotopes are optimised in a stepwise manner and optimised structures are finally evaluated in clinical trials.

Project aims (English)

Goal of the project is the design of a multi-stage multi-component malaria subunit vaccine. Safety and immunogenicity of virosomes loaded with individual mimotopes will first be evaluated separately. A final vaccine candidate for efficacy testing in malaria endemic re-gions is expected to consist of several components.

Publications / Results (English)

Induction of Parasite Growth Inhibitory Antibodies by a Virosomal Formulation of a Pep-tidomimetic of Loop-I from Domain III of Plasmodium falciparum Apical Mem-brane Antigen 1. M. S. Mueller, A. Renard, F. Boato, D. Vogel, M. Naegeli, R. Zurbriggen, J. A. Robinson, and G. Pluschke, Infect Immun, 71, 4749-4758 (2003)A virosome-mimotope (Viro-Tope) approach to synthetic vaccine design and optimization: synthesis, conformation and immune recognition of a new potential malaria vac-cine candidate. B. Pfeiffer., E. Peduzzi, K. Moehle, R. Zurbriggen, R. Glück, G. Pluschke and J. A. Robinson. Angewandte Chemie, 42, 2367 -2371 (2003)Exploiting conformationally constrained peptidomimetics and an efficient human-compatible delivery system in synthetic vaccine design. Moreno, R., Jiang, L., Moehle, K., Zurbriggen, R., Glück, R., Robinson, J. A. and Pluschke, G. Chem-BioChem, 2, 838 - 843 (2001)