How are physicists helping to eradicate malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than a million people annually? Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology helped a young company create weakened, harmless versions of the malaria-causing parasite. These parasites are being used to create a new vaccine, which may prove to be more effective than current malaria vaccines.

The new vaccine is a departure from previous approaches, which have usually depended on proteins derived from only part of the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous species of parasite that causes malaria. Using vaccines based on whole living parasites had been on scientists’ minds for several decades, after they discovered that volunteers built up high levels of protection to malaria after being exposed to mosquitoes containing live, radiation-weakened parasites. Manufacturing technology has recently developed to the point where it is possible to efficiently extract weakened parasites from their mosquito carriers in order to make a vaccine.

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