Background: The worldwide burden of malaria remains a major public health problem due, in part, to the lack of an effective vaccine against the Plasmodium falciparum parasite. An effective vaccine will most likely require the induction of antigen specific CD8(+) and CD4(+) T-cells as well as long-lasting antibody responses all working in concert to eliminate the infection. We report here the effective modification of a self-assembling protein nanoparticle (SAPN) vaccine previously proven effective in control of a P. berghei infection in a rodent model to now present B- and T-cell epitopes of the human malaria parasite P. falciparum in a platform capable of being used in human subjects.
Methodology/principal findings: To establish the basis for a SAPN-based vaccine, B- and CD8(+) T-cell epitopes from the P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein (PfCSP) and the universal CD4 T-helper epitope PADRE were engineered into a versatile small protein (∼125 amino acids) that self-assembles into a spherical nanoparticle repetitively displaying the selected epitopes. P. falciparum epitope specific immune responses were evaluated in mice using a transgenic P. berghei malaria parasite of mice expressing the human malaria full-length P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein (Tg-Pb/PfCSP). We show that SAPN constructs, delivered in saline, can induce high-titer, long-lasting (1 year) protective antibody and poly-functional (IFNγ(+), IL-2(+)) long-lived central memory CD8(+) T-cells. Furthermore, we demonstrated that these Ab or CD8(+) T-cells can independently provide sterile protection against a lethal challenge of the transgenic parasites.
Conclusion: The SAPN construct induces long-lasting antibody and cellular immune responses to epitope specific sequences of the P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein (PfCSP) and prevents infection in mice by a transgenic P. berghei parasite displaying the full length PfCSP.