FILE: British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will seek marketing approval for the world's first malaria vaccine next year. Trial data showed the shot significantly cut cases of the disease in African children

Record ID: 862908

  • Title: FILE: British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will seek marketing approval for the world's first malaria vaccine next year. Trial data showed the shot significantly cut cases of the disease in African children
  • Date: 8th October 2013
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (FILE) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SCIENTIST PUTTING HIS ARM INTO A MOSQUITO CAGE VARIOUS OF MOSQUITOS FEEDING ON ARM
  • Embargoed: 23rd October 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Tanzania, United Republic of, Israel, United Kingdom
  • City:
  • Country: Tanzania, United Republic of United Kingdom Israel Kenya
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  • Reuters ID: LVABBY6L1S5WCD144SMZVKYFOX22
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  • Story Text: British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will seek marketing approval for the world's first malaria vaccine next year after trial data showed the shot significantly cut cases of the disease in African children.
    The vaccine known as RTS,S was found, after 18 months of follow-up, to have almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children in the trial, and to have reduced by around a quarter the number of malaria cases in infants.

    "Based on these data, GSK now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA)," GSK, which has been developing the vaccine for three decades, said in a statement.
    It added that the United Nations health agency, the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), has indicated it may recommend use of the RTS,S vaccine from as early as 2015 if EMA drugs regulators back its licence application.
    Malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease, kills hundreds of thousands of people a year, mainly babies in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and scientists say an effective vaccine is key to attempts to eradicate it.
    Yet hopes that RTS,S would be the final answer were dampened last year when results from a final-stage trial with 6,537 babies aged six to 12 weeks showed the shot provided only modest protection, reducing episodes of the disease by 30 percent compared to immunisation with a control vaccine.
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