“Once you have proven the concept, everything else is
engineering. The stakes are so high. A baby dies every 60 seconds from malaria. I can’t
imagine that some engineering genius can’t figure these things out. Let’s go
for it.”
Yesterday, the journal Science published the
results of Steve Hoffman’s newest clinical trial showing that for the first
time ever, 100% of the trial volunteers who received a high dose of his unique
vaccine were protected. In the last 24
hours, CNN, Reuters, U.S. News and World Report and dozens of news outlets
around the country ran headlines like: “Sanaria’s Malaria Vaccine Yields
Unprecedented Protection in Clinical Trials.” Or “New Malaria Vaccine the First
to Offer Complete Protection.” @ ow.ly/nMstN Major foundation funding has quickly begun to return.
The lead researcher for Steve’s
principal competitor, the giant pharmaceutical Glaxo Smith Kline was quoted as
saying “This is a really
important, really exciting proof of concept.”
Nearly three years
ago Public Affairs published my book, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men,
about Hoffman’s quest to develop the first completely effective malaria vaccine
that could eradicate malaria as one of the world’s leading causes of illness
and death for children. @ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586487647/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0J2XKF0D7A1G6MSCMC2H&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846
I
was drawn to the story specifically because of the parallels to our work –
knowing that something was solvable, knowing that existing solutions worked but
were hard to scale, and that doing so might seem expensive, unrealistic or
unreasonable. Hoffman’s standard - that
good is not good enough – was akin to our view that feeding kids is not good
enough but that we need to end childhood hunger. I knew there was much to learn
from him.
The
book was published just as Steve was taking his vaccine into clinical trials.
His approach, which depended on extracting weakened but live malaria parasites
from the dissected salivary glands of mosquitoes, was ridiculed in some
quarters as impractical to produce and administer. The trials went badly. The vaccine,
administered by injection failed and the volunteers exposed to malaria
contracted it (though they were immediately cured by aggressive medical intervention
according to standard protocols.) The
funding for Steve’s work dried up. He
faced some dark days.
But
Steve knew that the weakened parasite triggered immunity to protect against
malaria when they entered the body through multiple mosquito bites. So he
refused to give up, even as some abandoned their support. Instead he doubled
down. He increased dosage and settled on
an approach truly beyond imagination: administering the vaccine through an IV,
something entirely impractical across Africa where children need it the most. But his strategic objective at this stage was
not scale, it was “proof of concept.” It's an approach very much at the core of our No Kid Hungry campaign. Now that proof of concept has been affirmed, new funding will be
devoted to additional trials, scale and sustainability.
The history of
malaria suggests no more than cautious optimism is warranted at this point.
There is still a long way to go. But Steve
Hoffman’s long journey has been dramatically accelerated by the proof of
concept strategy we share.
Billy
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