Malaria is caused not by a virus or bacterium, but by a complex, shape-shifting parasite that has evolved alongside us for millennia. This has made vaccine development a brutal challenge.

In this episode, Jacob and Saloni are joined by Katharine Collins, who co-invented the second malaria vaccine, called R21, during her PhD. They discuss the gruelling process of reverse-engineering a vaccine and eureka moments along the way. They ask whether the biggest barriers to new vaccines are scientific or financial, and what it will take to finally eradicate one of natureʼs most vicious killers.

Hard Drugs is a podcast from Works in Progress about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.

You can watch or listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Saloni’s substack newsletter: https://www.scientificdiscovery.dev/

Jacob’s blog: https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ 

Acknowledgements:

• Aria Babu, editor at Works in Progress
• Graham Bessellieu, video editor
• Alice Edwards, captions
• Abhishaike Mahajan, cover art
• Atalanta Arden-Miller, art direction
• David Hackett, composer

Works in Progress & Coefficient Giving 

Thesis

• Katharine Collins (2014). R21, a novel particle based vaccine for a multi-component approach to malaria vaccination.

Books

• R. Killick-Kendrick (2012). Rodent Malaria.
• Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster (2004). Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases.

Articles and reports

• Saloni Dattani (2023). Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine sooner. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-we-didnt-get-a-malaria-vaccine-sooner/ 
• Jerome P Vanderberg (2010). Reflections on Early Malaria Vaccine Studies, the First Successful Human Malaria Vaccination, and Beyond https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2637529/
• Pratik Pawar (2022). It Took 35 years to Get a Malaria Vaccine. Why? https://undark.org/2022/05/25/it-took-35-years-to-get-a-malaria-vaccine-why/ 
• Ernst R. Berndt, Rachel Glennerster, Michael R. Kremer, Jean Lee, Ruth Levine, Georg Weizsacker & Heidi Williams (2005) Advanced Purchase Commitments for a Malaria Vaccine: Estimating Costs and Effectiveness. https://www.nber.org/papers/w11288 
• Ryan Duncombe, Karam Elabd and Justin Sandefur (2024). Avoiding Another Lost Decade on Malaria Vaccines https://www.cgdev.org/publication/avoiding-another-lost-decade-malaria-vaccines