‘Gene mapping puts no bite into hunt for malaria vaccine’

But Dr. Regina Rabinovitch, a pediatrician who heads the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said the genetic code itself offers little immediate help to vaccine researchers. ‘‘It’s not as relevant to us….the technology to translate from the genome to a vaccine is still being developed,’’ she said.

Scientists have been working for decades to try to develop a vaccine against malaria, which infects between 300 million and 500 million people every year. But most existing vaccines work against viruses or bacteria, which are simple organisms.

‘‘It’s a complicated and somewhat devious creature,’’ Dr. Rabinovitch said. One of the most spectacular vaccine failures involved SPF-66, which at first looked like it might work at least to some degree.

But Rabinovitch said as it was tested more and more, it seemed to work less well. ‘‘The vaccine itself varied. It’s an old story and not a very happy one. Because plasmodium is so complicated, any vaccine that protects against it will have to also be complex,” she said. (Reuters)