ABSTRACT
Malaria remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. Of the approximately 50 million deaths worldwide each year, about 2 million are attributed to malaria. Throughout the last century there were many exciting developments with the promise to eradicate or at least control malaria. These included the discovery of chloroquine and other drugs, and insecticides to kill the mosquito vector. While it was very natural to think of vaccine development as a way to prevent malaria infection, classical approaches such as attenuation and the use of killed organisms were not useful for malaria principally because the parasites require red cells for their growth and it is not practical to culture and administer parasites cultivated in such a manner. Safety considerations would also be of paramount concern. It was thus a time of great excitement when malaria genes were first cloned [1,2], opening the possibility for the development of a subunit vaccine. Chapters 70-73 outline the different approaches in some detail, but the purpose of this chapter is to discuss the overall strategies for malaria vaccine development.
