The Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) has secured funding from the Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking following a proposal in response to the HORIZON 2024 call titled “EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking: Research on Existing Malaria Vaccines and Development of New Promising Candidates,” submitted by a consortium of 12 institutions.
The five-year project, titled “A Multi-Stage Malaria Vaccine for Control and Elimination,” (PfVIMT) is expected to run from March 1, 2025, to February 28, 2030. The objective is to develop Pfs230D1+R21, the first multi-stage malaria vaccine aimed at reducing malaria transmission. This initiative is expected to reduce clinical malaria rates and support both control and elimination efforts.
Through innovative trial design and capacity-building activities, the project further seeks to achieve the following objectives:
- Establish the safety and efficacy of a multi-stage vaccine to reduce malaria transmission.
- Pursue accelerated approval of Pfs230D1+R21.
- Expand population-wide long-term safety and efficacy data on the R21 malaria vaccine.
- Generate expertise and data to inform recommendations that expand cGMP and supply chain for vaccines in Africa.
Among its key objectives, the project aims to expand clinical trial capacity for transmission-blocking interventions, build expertise and evidence to support future vaccine manufacturing in Africa, and enhance understanding of malaria immunity, including correlates of protection. By the end of the project, it is anticipated that an approved Pfs230D1+R21 vaccine will be poised for Phase 4 cluster-randomized trials.
Participating Institutions are:
- Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (Coordinator)
- Université des Sciences des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako
- The Registered Trustees of the Ifakara Health Institute
- Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
- Institut de Recherche Clinique du Bénin
- Groupe de Recherche Action en Santé Sarl
- Kenya Medical Research Institute
- Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research – University of Ghana
- The Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd
Professor Linda Eva Amoah, the Principal Investigator of the project, will be assisted by Professors Kwadwo Ansah Koram, Benjamin Abuaku and Samuel Dadzie as Co-Principal Investigators. The three investigators have extensive experience in malaria research, including expertise in malaria parasite prevalence studies, mosquito infection studies and in conducting clinical trials.
Profile of Principal Investigator
Prof. Linda Eva Amoah is an Associate Professor of Immunology at the Department of Immunology whose primary research focuses on malaria transmission and gametocyte biology. Her laboratory is taking an integrated approach to both evaluate malaria transmission in the field and design new transmission blocking agents. She is very interested in developing and evaluating effective diagnostic tools that can aid in the identification of all Plasmodium species contained in symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. In addition to producing and evaluating the efficacy of transmission blocking malaria vaccine candidates, she has projects in place to evaluate the development of transmission blocking immunity and the production of gametocytes during a natural infection. She also has projects involved in developing and evaluating effective diagnostic tools that can aid in the identification of all Plasmodium species contained in symptomatic and asymptomatic infections
Her laboratory is also involved in drug discovery. Having begun with the screening of natural products for antimalarial activity, my laboratory has advanced its drug discovery research to include drug resistance and mechanism of action studies and is currently serving as the biology group of the Ghana Drug Discovery Hub (DDH).
She has excellent skills in organic and physical chemistry labs, recombinant DNA technology, various forms of PCR, ELISA, malaria parasite culture, antimalarial drug assays, performing direct and standard mosquito membrane feeding assays, performing public health surveillance studies at large and small scale, teaching molecular biology and biotechnology.
She is a skilled chemist, biochemist and molecular biologist with a unique combination of academic and industrial research experience in performing Protein purification, Western and Northern blots, a variety of PCR assays, Molecular cloning and Sequencing. She is experienced in the use of instrumentation pertaining to Protein separation science.
Prof. Amoah also works with the Ghana National Malaria Elimination Program to conduct routine surveillance of Pfhrp2 gene-deletant parasites in 160 health facilities across the country to inform policy on malaria diagnosis in the country.
Profile of Co-Principal Investigator
Prof. Kwadwo Ansah Koram is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. A qualified physician from the UGMS and further training in Public Health and Epidemiology, he has been with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for more than 3 decades. Since joining the Institute, he has led several large-scale epidemiological studies on malaria and other infectious diseases. Working with the Malaria Elimination Program, he established the Therapeutic Efficacy Testing programme to monitor the effectiveness of anti-malarial treatments more than 25 years ago. He has led several collaborative studies on malaria with colleagues from US NIAID, NHRC, University of Copenhagen, University of Melbourne among others. He was Head of Department of Epidemiology (2003 – 2009); Deputy Director (2009 – 2012) and Director (2012 – 2017). He serves as an adjunct faculty of the School of Public Health where he coordinated the Principles of Epidemiology course for several years and currently runs the Design and Analysis of Epidemiological Studies for doctoral students. He also teaches on the newly established PhD in Clinical Sciences at the UGMS. In addition to all these, he heads the Clinical Trials Unit of the Department of Epidemiology, currently overseeing a Phase 2 trial of Lassa fever vaccine under the sponsorship of IAVI with support from CEPI.
Profile of Co-Principal Investigator
Prof. Benjamin Abuaku is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the department of Epidemiology, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), University of Ghana. He is the Training Coordinator and Student Placement Officer at NMIMR as well as Head of the Nutrition department. He is an internal examiner at the University of Ghana School of Public Health and supervises post-graduate students in the same school. As a Public Health Practitioner, Prof. Abuaku has coordinated several malaria epidemiological studies since 1993. One of such studies on antimalarial therapeutic efficacy conducted between 1998 and 2004 under his mentor, Prof. Kwadwo Ansah Koram, contributed immensely to the review of Ghana’s antimalarial drug policy in 2004, when monotherapy with chloroquine was replaced with Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) in the treatment of uncomplicated malaria. Prof. Abuaku is currently the focal person for antimalarial therapeutic efficacy studies in Ghana and has been a member of the National Malaria Case Management Technical Working Group (MCM TWG) since 2013. He also collaborates with the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) to monitor the impact of malaria interventions on parasite positivity rates in thirty (30) sentinel health facilities across Ghana. He has been a WHO Consultant on Antimalarial Therapeutic Efficacy Studies since 2016. Prof. Abuaku also conducts other infectious disease studies. He’s currently a Co-Investigator on a Phase 2 Lassa Fever vaccine trial supported by IAVI.
Profile of Co-Principal Investigator
Prof. Samuel Kweku Dadzie is an Associate Professor of Medical Entomology in the Parasitology Department of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) with over 26 years’ experience in the field of Medical Entomology. He holds a PhD in Vector Biology from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in UK and his research interest focuses on vector biology with emphasis on insecticide resistance and application of modern methods to address the burden of vector-borne diseases. Prof. Dadzie has worked extensively on vectors of malaria and arboviral diseases in Ghana and beyond. He is a member of several committees in Ghana including the Malaria Vector Control Oversight and Malaria Research Advisory Group of the Ghana National Malaria Elimination Program. He has over the years provided consultancy services to WHO on insecticide resistance and the development of training modules for entomology. He is currently the Focal person for African Network of Vector Resistance (ANVR/WHO/AFRO) and also founding member and the chair of the West African Aedes Surveillance Network (WAASuN) that was recently established to help strengthen the capacity of West African countries to control arboviral diseases. He is an adhoc member of WHO Scientific Working Group and currently the Vice-chair of the Technical Advisory Group of the WHO Global Arbovirus Initiative. He is a member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and Entomological Society of America.