The Irish vaccine developer who says we were \u2018lucky\u2019 with Covid-19Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nHe received an honorary knighthood from Britain\u2019s Queen Elizabeth II in 2021 for services to science and public health.<\/p>\n
There were an estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2024, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Children under five account for about 75 per cent of malaria deaths in Africa.<\/p>\n
Scientists have been attempting to develop a vaccine for more than a century. Traditional malaria vaccines achieved only modest or short-lived protection, often reaching 30\u201350 per cent efficacy in young children.<\/p>\n
Hill and his team developed a vaccine that presents more of the malaria-specific protein regions needed to trigger a strong immune response, helping to achieve around 75\u201380 per cent protection in clinical trials.<\/p>\n
The vaccine can be produced at large scale, costs less than \u20ac3 per dose and remains stable for up to two years under standard refrigeration conditions, helping make vaccination programmes more accessible in regions where malaria remains endemic. <\/p>\n
Hill\u2019s interest in developing a malaria vaccine stems from his experience working as a researcher at a hospital in The Gambia in the late 1980s. <\/p>\n
\u201cI saw children dying from malaria right in front of me. That experience stayed with me and convinced me that we needed something better than what was available,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Over the following three decades, Hill\u2019s team at Oxford\u2019s Jenner Institute investigated multiple vaccine options before developing R21\/Matrix-M.<\/p>\n
Ghana became the first country to approve the vaccine in 2023, followed by Nigeria. Later that year, the WHO formally recommended it for widespread use. <\/p>\n
Malaria vaccination is currently being integrated into routine immunisation programmes in more than 20 African countries, reducing malaria-related illness and deaths.<\/p>\n
The European Inventor Award recognises innovators across different disciplines. <\/p>\n
The other finalists in Hill\u2019s category were Portuguese researcher Paula Videira and her team for developing a high-precision antibody that distinguishes cancer cells from healthy tissue and Finnish physicist Mikko M\u00f6tt\u00f6nen for creating an ultrasensitive cryogenic microwave sensor that improves quantum computing hardware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dublin-born scientist has won a prestigious international award for helping to develop a malaria vaccine. The European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-532196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532196","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=532196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}