malaria vaccine


malaria vaccine

An as-yet hypothetical vaccine against malaria. Development of such a vaccine is extremely difficult given Plasmodium falciparum’s high mutability, in part because it reproduces sexually within the mosquito host, thus maintaining or even increasing its heterozygosity, and because natural immunity to P falciparum requires continued contact with plasmodia to enrich the immune response to the genetically diverse agent, as opposed to the “one-shot” exposure of a vaccine.