Question: How can you improve the vaccine?

Adam Ruben answered on 14 Mar 2018:

We’re working on all kinds of things. One way is to give it with an “adjuvant,” which is an additive that makes the vaccine work better. We have an experimental adjuvant, and when you give it with the vaccine to mice, suddenly you only need one dose instead of three. Another way is to “attenuate,” or weaken, the vaccine in a different way than we do now. Right now we weaken it (remember, if it weren’t weakened, it would CAUSE malaria instead of preventing it) using irradiation. But we could also weaken it with drugs or with genetic changes, both of which we’re working on, and one of those methods might make it work better. We’re testing our first version of a genetically attenuated vaccine right now in the Netherlands, for example. Volunteers are about to get their final dose next week.