Every year, about 1 million people die of malaria. Approximately 70% of Africa’s one-year olds have malaria parasites in their blood. With global warming, the situation is likely to get worse. The good news is that there’s a promising vaccine being developed, which has been effective in animal experiments. I heard about it through a European prize, the Körber European Science Award, which will be presented at a ceremony in Hamburg on September 7, 2007. The prize is being awarded to Peter Seeberger.

Using the automated oligosaccharide synthesizer that he developed, Peter Seeberger and his colleagues succeeded in artificially producing glycans of pathogens known to cause diseases. They furthermore were successful in transforming the glycans into vaccine candidates for illnesses such as leishmaniasis, malaria, AIDS, anthrax, and tuberculosis. The vaccine candidates have already demonstrated their effectiveness in animal experiments, and the malaria vaccine is to be tested on humans for the first time next year.

Story here.