Parasite antibiotic resistance and mosquito insecticide resistance has increased the need for the development of malaria vaccines to combat the spread of the disease. The long term goal of this project is the development of a vaccine against P. falciparum malaria and the development of a strategy for producing vaccines against other malaria species. The method is to identify parasite antigens that can induce antimalarial antibodies with a capacity to inhibit the blood stage cycle of the parasite. Antigens will be identified by producing mouse/mouse and human/human hybridomas using lymphocytes from immune mice and humans. These hybridomas will be a source of growth inhibitory-antimalarial monoclonal antibodies that will be used as probes to initially identify and isolate antigens that may be used to produce an antimalarial vaccine. Polyclonal antibody produced by the antigen initially purified with monoclonal antibody will be used to obtain sufficient antigen for further specific antigen studies.
| Li, W B; Bzik, D J; Tanaka, M et al. (1991) Characterization of the gene encoding the largest subunit of Plasmodium falciparum RNA polymerase III. Mol Biochem Parasitol 46:229-39 |
| Li, W B; Bzik, D J; Gu, H M et al. (1989) An enlarged largest subunit of Plasmodium falciparum RNA polymerase II defines conserved and variable RNA polymerase domains. Nucleic Acids Res 17:9621-36 |
