{"id":447339,"date":"2026-05-13T21:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/447339\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T21:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:04:14","slug":"we-needed-something-better-dublin-born-doctor-a-finalist-in-european-inventor-awards-for-malaria-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/447339\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We needed something better\u2019 \u2013 Dublin-born doctor a finalist in European Inventor Awards for malaria vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrian Hill (68) and his team developed a highly effective malaria vaccine that has now been recommended by the World Health Organisation for widespread use.<\/p>\n

He has been selected as a finalist in the\u201dResearch\u201d category of the European Inventor Award 2026 by an independent jury.<\/p>\n

A native of Ranelagh in Dublin, he was educated at Belvedere College and studied medicine in Trinity College in the 1970s before going on to Oxford University.<\/p>\n

Malaria remains one of the world\u2019s deadliest infectious diseases. According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610, 000 deaths were recorded globally in 2024, with children under five accounting for around three-quarters of all deaths in the WHO Africa Region.<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/p>\n

Dr Adrian Hill <\/p>\n

Developing a malaria vaccine has long been considered one of the toughest challenges in medicine.<\/p>\n

The malaria parasite is genetically complex and passes through multiple life-cycle stages in the human body, making it difficult for the immune system to recognise and block infection.<\/p>\n

Earlier vaccine candidates, including the first licensed malaria vaccine, achieved only modest and short-lived protection in young children.<\/p>\n

Mr Hill and his team addressed a key design limitation by increasing the amount and density of malaria-specific protein presented to the immune system, while removing components that could weaken the immune response.<\/p>\n

The resulting vaccine, known as R21\/Matrix-M, forms tiny nanoparticles that closely resemble the size of common viruses, a scale to which the human immune system responds particularly strongly. When combined with the Matrix-M adjuvant, the vaccine generates substantially higher antibody levels than earlier approaches.<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/p>\n

Dr Adrian Hill<\/p>\n

News in 90 seconds – Tuesday, May 12 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was working in The Gambia in the late 1980s, I saw children dying from malaria right in front of me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

“That experience stayed with me and convinced me that we needed something better than what was available. For most of the last two decades, half a million children were dying every year from malaria, almost all in Africa. Once you\u2019ve seen that, it\u2019s impossible not to want to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The R21 vaccine is the result of more than 30 years of sustained research at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n

Mr Hill\u2019s work was shaped early on by clinical experience in malaria-endemic regions and supported by long-term public and charitable funding, allowing repeated iteration in an academic setting before large-scale manufacturing partnerships were established.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The malaria vaccine<\/p>\n

A decisive breakthrough came when Phase 2b trials reported up to 77pc efficacy in 2021, exceeding the WHO\u2019s target for malaria vaccines.<\/p>\n

The vaccine was subsequently co-developed with the Serum Institute of India to enable production at scale and at low cost, making it suitable for routine immunisation programmes in low-income settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realised the world didn\u2019t need more descriptions of how complicated the malaria parasite is and how cleverly it has evaded our immune system for millions of years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

“What we really needed was a way to prevent it, and a vaccine seemed the obvious route. That\u2019s what pushed me toward research. The opportunity to create something that could have a real impact on huge numbers of people has always driven me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following regulatory approvals in African countries, the WHO formally recommended R21\/Matrix-M for widespread use in October 2023. The vaccine is designed to remain stable under real-world conditions and is priced at under \u20ac3 per dose, supporting broad access in high-burden regions.<\/p>\n

Mr Hill is one of three finalists in the \u2018Research\u2019 category of the European Inventor Award 2026.<\/p>\n

The other \u2018Research\u2019 finalists are Portuguese researcher Paula Videira and team for an antibody that distinguishes cancer cells from healthy tissue and Finnish physicist Mikko M\u00f6tt\u00f6nen for an ultrasensitive cryogenic microwave sensor to improve quantum computing hardware.<\/p>\n

The European Patent Office will announce the winners during a livestreamed ceremony from Berlin on July 2, 2026.<\/p>\n

In addition to the four award categories, the Popular Prize will be decided through a combined vote by the public and the independent jury. Public voting opens on May 12, 2026, and will be running until the ceremony on July 2, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adrian Hill (68) and his team developed a highly effective malaria vaccine that has now been recommended by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4593,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-447339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-eilish-oregan","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}