VAC4PM: Clinical development of vaccine candidates against placental malaria

Placental malaria is a serious disease that affects a particularly vulnerable demographic group, pregnant women. The burden of disease is high, threatening more than 100 million women each year and causing the death of around 50 pregnant women and up to 000 infants.

An effective vaccine would be an attractive tool to better control placental malaria and its consequences or to complement the still imperfect existing tools. The results of the first clinical trials with the VAR2CSA antigen highlighted the need to optimize the ability of the candidates evaluated to induce more cross-reactivities.

The overall objective of the vaccine projects of our UMR is to advance the development of the placental malaria vaccine and to broaden the immune response by:

1. increasing the level of vaccine-induced antibodies by using virus-like particles (VLPs) to display VAR2CSA antigens
2. evaluating the potential of an approach using conformational synthetic peptide antigen derivatives associated with VLPs to increase cross-reactivity and cross-inhibitory antibody titers.