EDCTP Multi-Stage Malaria Vaccine Consortium (MMVC) annual meeting in The Gambia

In late November 2022, Simon, Angela, Sarah, Jee-Sun and Jo attended the annual meeting of the EDCTP Multi-Stage Malaria Vaccine Consortium (MMVC) in The Gambia.

The EDCTP MMVC is coordinated by the University of Oxford and works with a wide range of partners from Europe and across East and West Africa. The Consortium’s goal is to clinically develop an optimised and highly-effective multi-stage vaccine against P. falciparum malaria. Now in its fourth year, the Consortium met to share the latest data and review progress.

Simon, Angela, Jo and Sarah all presented on the Draper Lab’s latest efforts to develop a high efficacy blood-stage vaccine component targeting the essential RH5 antigen, including data from recent clinical trials conducted with our partner Dr Ally Olotu at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Future trials were also planned for West Africa. These were discussed in highly productive meetings with teams at The Gambia, working in partnership with the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM, and in Burkina Faso, working in partnership with the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro (CRUN).

The team are especially grateful to the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM who hosted the meeting, and showed such warm hospitality and also organised visits to the local laboratories and clinical trial site.