Word: nussenzweig
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Dates: during 1984-1984
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Malaria research had largely come to a halt during the years that chloroquine and DDT seemed all conquering. But Dr. Ruth Nussenzweig of N.Y.U. continued to pursue a malaria vaccine, a goal many viewed as impossible. The malaria bug presented unique obstacles. The first was the complex life cycle of the Plasmodium parasite, which is in a sense three bugs in one (see diagram): the sporozoite, which enters the human bloodstream when an infected mosquito bites; the merozoite, which invades the red blood cells and causes the disease's chills and fever; and the gametocyte, which, when ingested...
...Once the body knows the chemical features, or antigens, of an infectious agent, it can produce specific weapons, or antibodies, against it. With malaria, however, there are three faces to recognize. Each stage is marked by different antigens, and antibodies against one stage will not provide protection against another. Nussenzweig and her immunologist husband Victor decided to focus their efforts on a sporozoite vaccine. In 1967 she showed that it was possible to protect mice against malaria by injecting them with sporozoites that had been rendered harmless by irradiation. The same result was achieved in a small number of human...
...identify the specific antigen, found on the surface of the sporozoite, that is responsible for producing immunity to this stage of the parasite, and they were able to unravel part of the chemical structure of the antigen. To their surprise, it was quite simple. So simple, says Victor Nussenzweig, "that it can be very easily synthesized using plain, old-fashioned chemistry." Nonetheless, a vaccine based on the antigen still faces "a lot of pitfalls," warns Top of Walter Reed. Indeed, many scientists question whether any vaccine can prompt the immune system to react fast enough to catch sporozoites after they...