WIPO Director General Welcomes First Malaria Vaccine

October 8, 2021

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director General Daren Tang welcomed the approval of the first malaria vaccine, which was recommended October 6, 2021, by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the immunization of children.

Each year, malaria kills 270,000 children under the age of five, many of them in Africa.

The vaccine, developed by WIPO Re:Search Member GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),  represents an important scientific discovery because, genetically, parasites are more complex than viruses or bacteria. It will be used in regions with moderate to high P. falciparum malaria transmission.

I am delighted to celebrate the WHO approval of the first childhood malaria vaccine,” said Mr. Tang. “This game-changing advancement by GSK, a founding member of the WIPO Re:Search Consortium for NTDs, malaria and TB, will save children’s lives and is a global health milestone.”

WHO’s recommendation, based on scientific evidence and trial results, confirms the groundbreaking effect of the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine (RTS,S), which is not only the first vaccine for malaria, but also the first vaccine for any parasitic disease.

The development of vaccines for parasitic diseases that disproportionately affect the poor, such as malaria, has been affected by the lack of a profitable market, the technical complexity of developing vaccines against a parasite and the limited number of companies conducting pharmaceutical research in this area.

For over a decade, WIPO has been committed to addressing malaria, particularly through the WIPO Re:Search Consortium. Harnessing the power of public-private partnerships by making intellectual property (IP) available to scientists who need it, WIPO Re:Search, which is a partnership between WIPO and Seattle-based NGO Bio Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), advances early-stage research in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), malaria and tuberculosis.

Eight pharmaceutical companies (Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, MSD, Novartis, Pfizer and Takeda), are members of WIPO Re:Search, generously sharing intellectual property  assets with researchers who need them. Together with academic institutions and research institutes, these companies comprise WIPO Re:Search’s 164 members operating in 46 countries on six continents.  In its first 10 years, WIPO Re:Search fostered over 160 collaboration agreements, of which more than 50 have focused on malaria.

In 2020, the United Nations recognized WIPO Re:Search and its important role in developing innovations in the fight against malaria.

Within the WIPO Re:Search portfolio, malaria research figures prominently among numerous collaborations. Pfizer’s recent collaboration with antimalarial researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and at The George Washington University enabled the advancement of studies on optimal drug delivery mechanisms. Through WIPO Re:Search, Australia’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) and MSD are currently working to disrupt malaria parasite replication via novel modes of action that bypass resistance mechanisms. In addition, Johnson & Johnson provides WEHI’s malaria researchers with access to its Jump-stARter library of over 80,000 compounds.