Burnet Institute and ARTES Biotechnology have joined forces to develop a new type of malaria vaccine in a project funded by the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI). The Burnet Institute is a non-profit biomedical research institute based in Melbourne, Australia, and ARTES is a contract service provider offering development and transfer of recombinant production cell lines and processes based  on microbial expression platforms and the development and transfer of virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccines.

The project will use technology developed at the Burnet Institute by Deputy Director, Associate Professor David Anderson and colleagues. ARTES holds the international patent rights and adapted the platform to vaccine production (known as the Metavax platform).The project will focus on strategies to produce vaccines that can block the transmission of malaria infection from mosquitoes to people. Purified vaccine antigens (Pfs25 and Pfs230) will be produced as VLPs for initial testing in laboratory studies.

Source: Burnet Institute