DEVELOPMENT OF MALARIA MULTIPLE ANTIGEN PEPTIDE(MAP) VACCINE

疟疾感染在流行地区造成约300万人死亡，全世界每年有超过20亿人面临感染疟疾的风险。这种疾病的病原体是疟原虫属的寄生虫。随着对这种寄生虫的耐药性的出现，需要开发疟疾疫苗。其他人正在使用几种方法来开发安全有效的疫苗。我们选择开发多抗原肽（MAPs）疫苗，因为它避免了使用减毒活寄生虫、热灭活寄生虫或重组抗原时遇到的几个限制。 例如，外源因子的存在和难以产生足够的寄生虫通常与活的或热杀死的寄生虫有关。类似地，重组抗原的生产需要劳动密集型的纯化和表征过程。我们成功地合成了三种不同的MAPs，这些MAPs含有疟原虫生活史中表达的不同抗原的表位。这些包括来自肝阶段特异性蛋白（LSA-1）、血液阶段裂殖子表面抗原（MSP-1）和子孢子特异性环子孢子蛋白（CSP）的T-和B-细胞表位。这是第一次，这种性质的地图已被合成，这是充分表征。 目前，这些MAP正在两种不同品系的小鼠中进行免疫学评估。还正在进行研究，以确定免疫反应的类型。

Malaria infection causes ~ 3 million deaths in endemic areas and over two billion people world-wide per year are at risk of getting the disease. The causative agent of the disease is the parasite of genus Plasmodium. With emergence of drug resistance to this parasite, there is a need for developing malaria vaccine. Several approaches are being used by others to develope a safe and efficacious vaccine. We have choosen to develope a mutiple antigen peptide (MAPs)vaccine because it circumvents several limmitations which one encounters while using attenuated live parasites,heat killed parasites or recombinat antigens. For example,presence of adventitious agents, and difficulty of generating enough parasites is often associated with live or heat killed parasites. Simlarly, production of recombinant antigens requires labor intensive process of purification and characterization. We have sucessfully synthesized three different MAPs containing epitopes from different antigens expressed during life cycle of malaria parasite. These include T- and B-cell epitopes from liver stage specific protein (LSA-1), blood stage merozoite surface antigen (MSP-1), and sporozoite specific circumsporozoite protein (CSP). It is for the first time that MAPs of this nature have been synthesized which are fully characterizable. Currently, these MAPs are being evaluated immunologically in two different strains of mice. Studies are also underway to characterize the type of immunological response.