Antibody-based therapies effective at controlling malaria

Passive immunization through the development of fully human antibodies specific to Plasmodium falciparum may be effective at controlling the disease, report researchers led by Dr. Richard S.

McIntosh from the University of Nottingham in a paper published in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens. The researchers developed these novel reagents by antibody repertoire cloning generated from immune Gambian adults.

While it remains unclear if in vitro assays are predictive of functional immunity in humans, due to the lack of suitable animal models, according to this study antimalarial efficacy of human antibodies can be determined using rodent malaria parasites transgenic for P. falciparum antigens in mice and humans. An in vivo mouse model has significant advantage over the use of new world primates, the only other model for human malaria, which are labor-intensive and difficult to reproduce.