Last week I read that Oxford University’s Jenner Institute had completed Phase II trials for a malaria vaccine that demonstrated a 77% efficacy. Malaria affects 500 million people on the globe; annual deaths due to malaria are as high as 1 million per year. Most are among young children. Previous attempts to develop a vaccine have been hindered by the complexity of the malaria parasite—any of several species in the genus Plasmodium—which invades host cells and whose genome contains thousands of genes.

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