A new malaria vaccination tool based on replication-competent Plasmodium falciparum parasites.

Recently licensed subunit vaccines represent the first and, thus far, the only approved agents for vaccination against malaria. However, these vaccines still fail to confer highly effective long-lasting protective immunity. Whole-organism vaccines, employing attenuated Plasmodium sporozoites as immunization agents, constitute a promising alternative for highly effective malaria vaccination. In this issue of EMBO Molecular Medicine, Goswami et al (2024) report on the generation and pre-clinical characterization of genetically attenuated Plasmodium parasites, termed LARC2, whose development arrests at late stages of liver infection. Their results warrant the clinical evaluation of PfSPZ-LARC2 towards its use as a whole-organism vaccine against malaria.