Malaria<\/a> is a serious disease that can be deadly if it\u2019s not diagnosed and treated quickly.<\/p>\nThe disease comes from an infected mosquito bite.<\/p>\n
But University of South Florida researchers have identified a specific region of a malaria parasite.<\/p>\n
This region can be recognized and targeted by antibodies.<\/p>\n
Noah Sather is the senior author of the research.<\/p>\n
He describes antibodies as the things your immune system uses to fight infections and diseases.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time you go to develop a vaccine, you\u2019re trying to use some part of the bug to generate an immune response,\u201d Sather said. \u201cAnd what we found is that the parts of the bug that had been previously used for vaccine design for the last 40 or so years. It\u2019s been ineffective.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research is still in its early stages as vaccine development is a long process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s 1000 steps, we maybe got through the first 200,\u201d Sather said.<\/p>\n
But, he also said that it is a well-defined process that people know how to do and they know what steps to take forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes the hardest part is just getting proof of concept that it works,\u201d Sather said. \u201cAnd now we have that. And so, the steps are relatively well laid out in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sather said this discovery was possible thanks to his team\u2019s expertise in lab-created antibodies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that most science makes small gains and those small gains add up. This is one of those cases where we got to make a big leap and make a big discovery,\u201d Sather said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a discovery that has the potential to save millions of lives. And that\u2019s both a privilege and extraordinarily rare for any scientist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sather says it could take 5 to 7 years before they start to test small trials in humans and another 8 to 10 years for the vaccine to be available to the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of South Florida researchers have identified a specific region of a malaria parasite that can be recognized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[147194,113,571,6584,159604,30415,7352,135,137,136,3650,151186],"class_list":["post-428735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-alternative-medicine-health","tag-education","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-malaria","tag-news-and-public-affairs","tag-research","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-university-of-south-florida","tag-vaccinations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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