Question: when do you think you will find a cure for malaria

Adam Ruben answered on 9 Mar 2018:

We think we have one already. It’s down the hall from where I’m sitting right now, in a freezer.

But before we can go give it to everybody, we have to do several things. We have to show that it works, which we’ve already done. We have to figure out what the best way is to give it. (How many shots? Five shots? Three? Will it still work if we just give it in two shots? How close together should the shots be? Every day, or once a month? How much of our vaccine should be in each shot? Do we need a different dose for children than for adults? Will it work in people with HIV? Will it work in pregnant women?) And we have to show that we can make it cleanly and safely. Once we do all of those things, we ask for permission to start giving it to people. For now, we’re only allowed to give it to people in clinical trials, which are like experiments on human beings who volunteer (or whose parents volunteer them). We’ve given it to more than 1200 people on three continents in the past 9 years, and we’re hoping to finish everything up in the next 2-3 years.