30 Oct 2023
Moderna Australia Fellowship awarded to Dr Lauren Holz for malaria vaccine development
University of Melbourne Dr Lauren Holz, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Heath Group at the Doherty Institute, is one of only two scientists selected to join Moderna’s inaugural Australia Fellowship Program. Her project aims to develop the first effective mRNA-based malaria vaccine that targets the liver stage of the parasite lifecycle, which if proven effective, will save lives, provide major health and economic benefits, and address a health issue of extreme global importance.
Transmitted by mosquitoes, malaria affected an estimated 241 million people and resulted in approximately 627,000 deaths around the world in 2020 alone. While interventions such as insecticide impregnated bed-nets and access to effective medicines have greatly reduced deaths in recent decades, without an effective vaccine, it will be impossible to quash the parasitic disease’s devastating impact on global health.
Dr Holz is a liver immunology specialist and, over the last four years, she has focused on developing new vaccine strategies to target the liver stage of malaria in the last four years. In that time, she developed and patented two novel vaccine platforms, the most recent of which is an mRNA vaccine.
Using rodent malaria models, Dr Holz and colleagues discovered that immune cells that permanently reside within the liver, termed CD8+ tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM cells) and previously thought to be antibodies, are crucial for eradicating parasites and generating sterile immunity.
In collaboration with partners at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) and the Malaghan Institute (New Zealand), the team leveraged their expertise in malaria T cell immunity and developed an mRNA-based malaria vaccine. In proof-of-concept experiments using a lipoplex (LPX) based vaccine, they were able to generate large numbers of malaria-specific TRM cells which could protect against malaria challenge.
“A lot of malaria vaccines undergoing trials have worked really well in animal models or when they’re given to people who haven’t had malaria before. But they don’t work well when given to people living in malaria-endemic regions. In contrast, our vaccine is still capable of generating protective liver-specific immune cells and providing protection even when the animal models have been pre-exposed to the disease,” said Dr Holz.
“Our ultimate goal is to produce an efficacious vaccine directed against liver-stage human malaria and perform key translational studies to move this vaccine from the bench to the clinic.”
With support from the Moderna Australia Fellowship, Dr Holz’s lab will advance this work to develop an mRNA vaccine directed against liver-stage human malaria that provides the body instructions to make a protein that has been shown to eradicate malaria parasites.
Congratulations also to Dr Vihandha Wickramasinghe at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, for also being awarded the inaugural Australia Fellowship Program by Moderna.
From 2023 to 2027, Moderna’s Australia Fellowship Program will target awarding two fellowships per year to Australian researchers working on concepts that have the potential to enable the advancement of mRNA medicines. Recipients will receive expert mentorship, experiential learning and collaboration with Moderna’s world-leading R&D teams to support their industry capabilities.