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Our commitment to fighting malaria
GSK announces major progress in the fight against malaria: 18 October 2011
Today, we have announced the first results from a large-scale Phase III trial of our malaria vaccine candidate, published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), showing that the malaria vaccine candidate reduces the risk of malaria by half in young African children aged 5 to 17 months.
View GSK's malaria pictures on Flickr →
"These data bring us to the cusp of having the world’s first malaria vaccine, which has the potential to significantly improve the outlook for children living in malaria endemic regions across Africa."
Andrew Witty, CEO, GSK
"A vaccine is the simplest, most cost-effective way to save lives. These results demonstrate the power of working with partners to create a malaria vaccine that has the potential to protect millions of children from this devastating disease."
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
In the ongoing Phase III trial, the RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate, when added to the currently available malaria interventions, has shown the potential to further reduce the malaria disease burden by half, in infants and young children living in malaria endemic regions in sub-Saharan Africa
This investigational product is in development and subject to evaluation of the benefits and risks by the regulatory authorities before being made available to the infants and young children in sub-Saharan Africa. It is not developed for use in US or Europe.
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Factsheets
B-roll
- B-roll and information on the malaria vaccine trial on The Newsmarket website (subscription required)
World Malaria Day: 25 April 2011
On this day we recognise the global effort to provide effective control of malaria – a life-threatening disease spread by infected mosquitoes.
Approximately half of the world's population is at risk of malaria, particularly those living in lower-income countries. Every 45 seconds an African child dies of malaria.
Fortunately, malaria is preventable and curable.
This year there is a lot to celebrate. Thanks to significant global investments and partnerships in malaria control, marked progress has been made to stem the tide of malaria.
Annual deaths from malaria have declined from nearly one million in 2000 to under 800,000 in 2009, with much of this progress occurring in Africa.
GSK’s efforts against malaria are a key part of our commitment to finding new ways to treat the World Health Organization's three priority diseases of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Our malaria control strategy has three areas of focus:
- R&D for new malaria treatments and vaccines
- Community investment activities through the African Malaria Partnership (AMP)
- Preferential pricing for anti-malarials in the least-developed countries and sub-Saharan Africa
Reuters report on malaria: 14 December 2010
With a potential new vaccine on the horizon, the world faces important economic decisions in the fight against malaria, according to the Reuters report "Malaria: can we afford to wipe it out?". In the report, GSK scientist Joe Cohen describes progress being made with the development of a potential malaria vaccine and, in a video interview, Andrew Witty, GSK CEO, explains GSK's approach to proving medicines to the developing world.
ITV malaria programme features GSK: 23 November 2010
On Monday 22 November 2010, the UK's ITV television network broadcast a feature on the fight against malaria. The "Tonight" programme outlined the background to malaria, the effect it has on communities and and the challenges in treating it.
CEO Andrew Witty outlined the progress GSK is making in the development of a vaccine against malaria and GSK's role in helping communities affected by diseases like malaria.
Progress in the fight against Malaria: 19 May 2010
"The world desperately needs new medicines to
fight malaria. This data provides us and other researchers around the world with several new leads
to follow. We hope this information will drive further studies into the disease, and we call for all researchers
to add their findings back to the EBI to create an open worldwide collaboration to expand our collective knowledge and make new medicines."
Dr Patrick Vallance, Head of Drug Discovery at GSK
New research conducted by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was today published in Nature identifying promising potential leads to develop new medicines to treat malaria.
The research comes from a year-long screening of more than 2 million compounds in GSK’s chemical library to seek out those that could inhibit the malaria parasite, P. falciparum, and reports on an analysis of the more than 13,500 compounds, or hits, that showed greatest activity.
The data are available online through the following links:
Together with the added intelligence in the Nature publication, scientists globally have been given thousands of chemical starting points to stimulate their research into this deadly disease which kills one child in Africa every 30 seconds.
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