ANTIBODIES taken from Gambian people who are immune to malaria could be used to protect others from infection.
Researchers have long known that certain people are resistant to malaria infection – and that some of them have potent antibodies specific to a protein on the parasite’s surface called merozoite surface protein (MSP-1). However, attempts to turn these antibodies into a potential vaccine have been hampered by the lack of suitable animals to test them on. Mice, for example, don’t get ill when exposed to Plasmodium falciparum, the blood-borne parasite that causes human malaria – and even if they did,…
