Recent news
September 2011
Military hospital plays critical role in research and development in fight against malaria
September 6, 2011 -- Walter Reed Army Medical Center has played a leading role in infectious disease research and development (R&D). The center's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) is one of the world's premier research centers for infectious diseases, especially in the fight against malaria.
Driven by the need to fight malaria as soldiers traveled around the world and suffered many wartime losses to the disease, Walter Reed scientists are credited with launching some of the historically largest and earliest campaigns to develop new drugs.
“The whole first generation of malaria drugs came from that war effort,” said Dr. Alan Magill, a retired Army colonel and malaria expert, referring to R&D after World War II.
Developing drugs to combat malaria is extremely difficult because the malaria parasite keeps developing resistance to every new drug that scientists create. Because of this, scientists are eager to find an effective vaccine but malaria parasites are “by far the most complicated organisms that anybody has ever tried to vaccinate against,” according to an NPR story.
The story continues that “back in the 1980s, Walter Reed researchers produced the first glimmer that a vaccine against malaria could work.
That launched several years of dogged research that continues today, with the help of volunteers willing to risk getting malaria to test each new experimental vaccine.”
Regarding the success of the new research, NPR reports that, “Once again, the research has paid off. A vaccine that came out of Walter Reed is now in the final stages of a human trial involving nearly 16,000 children throughout sub-Saharan Africa. It's the first malaria vaccine ever to reach this advanced stage.
Results are expected later this year. In earlier smaller trials, the vaccine was 40 to 50 percent effective in preventing malaria. That's good enough to save millions of lives.”
