EDCTP MIMVaC-Africa Consortium 2023

In mid-January 2023, Simon and Sarah attended the annual meeting of the EDCTP MIMVaC-Africa Consortium in Tübingen, Germany.

The EDCTP MIMVaC project is coordinated by the Groupe de Recherche Action en Santé (GRAS) based in Burkina Faso. This large inter-disciplinary Consortium is formed by malaria vaccine developers from academia, industry and NGOs, plus clinical trial experts. In total ten partner institutions from around the world, including the University of Oxford, have come together and are resolutely committed to the fight against malaria through the development of next-generation malaria vaccines. Now entering its third year, the Consortium met to share the latest data and review progress.

Simon and Sarah presented on the Draper Lab’s latest efforts to develop a high efficacy Plasmodium falciparum blood-stage vaccine targeting the essential RH5 antigen and its wider invasion complex, this included data from recent clinical trials conducted with our partner Dr Ally Olotu at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Within the MIMVaC-Africa Consortium, the Draper group will provide a new vaccine targeting the wider RH5 invasion complex, and this will be initially trialled in a Phase Ib study called BIO-003 or “Crispy”. This trial is scheduled to take place at IHI later in 2023, with the hope this same vaccine could progress to a Phase IIb field efficacy trial at other sites in Africa in the later years of the Consortium’s activity.

The team are especially grateful to Prof. Dr. Peter Kremsner and his team at the University of Tübingen who hosted the meeting, showed such warm hospitality, and even arranged for some snow which made for a very picturesque setting!