Scientists may have discovered how to develop a vaccine to beat the killer disease malaria

Scientists may have discovered how to develop a vaccine to beat the killer disease malaria, it was revealed today. Biologists have found a genetic mutation that provides resistance to the disease in people from Papua New Guinea. It is hoped that the findings can be adapted to develop a vaccine to the virus, which kills up to two million people a year. The team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh found that the Papua New Guineans were protected against severe malaria as they lack a sticky protein called complement receptor one (CR1). In many blood samples from children with severe malaria, the malaria parasite sticks to the surrounding red blood cells. This phenomenon, known as “rosetting”, is much less common in children with milder forms of the illness. The Edinburgh team, led by Dr Alex Rowe, decided to investigate the phenomenon more closely with funding from the Wellcome Trust and UK Medical Research Council. His previous work has shown that the parasite was sticking to a protein on the human red blood cell CR1. The latest results were striking, as almost all the people tested were deficient in CR1.