SASKATOON — A Canadian-led research team says it has made a breakthrough in the fight against malaria with a novel vaccine now in development.
Toronto-based Danton Ivanochko, a protein engineer at The Hospital for Sick Children, told SaskToday the group’s work focuses on vaccines developed for global health, including one targeting malaria.
The Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan is also involved in the project, which is in its preclinical stage and is based on protein structure information.
In addition to Canada, where about 20 researchers from Ivanochko’s group are involved, the team includes collaborators from the United States (University of Washington and University at Buffalo) and the Netherlands.
He said vaccine development involves characterizing how proteins appear in the context of malaria parasites and how human antibodies bind to them.
“Those antibody protein structures at atomic resolution. The proper phrase for our work is structural immunology. We use the atomic structures of these protein interactions,” Ivanochko told SaskToday.
“These antibodies have these parasitic proteins, and we use that information to build better vaccines, more rationally designed with the intention of intervening towards malaria elimination.”
He added that the vaccine has advanced to preclinical testing, including non-human primate studies, and the team is working toward eventual clinical evaluation.
“This is the last step, to know if there is anything wrong simply. But there is promise of moving towards the model we’d be evaluating in the clinical setting,” said Ivanochko.
He noted the disease carries a significant social and economic burden, particularly in developing regions where funding for such research can be limited.
“There’s a huge social and economic burden, but most of this is within parts of the developing world that is very difficult to fund a lot of this work.”
Funding for the project comes primarily from federal government grants and non-profit organizations.
“Our long-term goal is to eliminate malaria by designing a vaccine that is more effective than the ones currently on the market,” said Ivanochko.
He added the malaria parasite is less likely to develop resistance to this vaccine compared to viruses such as influenza or COVID-19, which mutate rapidly.
“In those cases, the mutational rates at which those viruses evolve are very fast. The proteins that we're targeting in the malaria parasite are very conserved,” said Ivanochko.
“Their evolutionary rate is much slower compared to the flu or [corona] virus. We've selected our structure guidance approach, specific regions on proteins well conserved within field isolates.”
He said the team’s research has shown a stronger immune response by combining two of the most potent parts of the malaria parasite into a single vaccine candidate, compared with individual proteins.
“We would love to help the large portion of the world that is currently greatly underserved from a health perspective and contribute toward this grand goal of global malaria elimination,” he said.
Malaria is caused by a parasite transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes and remains a leading cause of death among children under the age of five. The World Health Organization reported in 2024 that 282 million people worldwide were infected, resulting in 610,000 deaths.
