Malaria is one of the world’s leading causes of death and illness, particularly among young children. There remains a strong need for highly effective vaccines to reduce the burden of malaria and progress towards eventual malaria elimination.

To date, most vaccines have achieved only modest levels of efficacy, emphasising the need for novel approaches in vaccine design that can induce potent immune responses.

This project will focus on identifying key antigens and specific epitopes that are targets of protective immunity against malaria and understanding the mechanisms mediating immunity, which includes antibodies and cell-mediated responses.

This knowledge is crucial for the development of effective vaccines against malaria. The project will also involve using knowledge of immunity to malaria for informing vaccine design, and the expression and testing of novel vaccine candidates.

Work is also undertaken on vaccine approaches to induce potent protective immune responses.

These studies will use novel approaches in molecular biology, cell biology and immunology to address these aims, and will build on recent major advances generated from our malaria vaccine program.

The project will primarily involve laboratory-based research, including western blotting, imaging, standard immunoassays, functional immunoassays (e.g neutralisation assays, cell-mediated immunity), cell culture and protein expression.