International Desk: BioNTech on Friday initiated an early-stage study to evaluate its experimental malaria vaccine in humans, the German drugmaker said.
The Phase 1 trial is expected to enrol 60 volunteers in the United States with no history of malaria to assess the vaccine candidate at three-dose levels.
Known as BNT165b1, it is the first vaccine candidate from BioNTech’s malaria project, which will also establish vaccine production in Africa.
The effort is one of several focused on addressing the mosquito-borne disease that kills over 600,000 each year, most of them children in Africa. The complicated structure and lifecycle of the malaria parasite has long stymied efforts to develop vaccines.
