An invariant, "universal" T-cell epitope in the P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein

Although there are important obstacles to malaria vaccine development, we believe they might be overcome by a strategy of searching for conserved regions of a vaccine candidate that are recognized in association with many different HLA molecules and, if necessary, deliberately modifying the conserved sequences to improve their immunogenicity for T cells. This approach is illustrated by work on the circumsporozoite (CS) protein of Plasmodium falciparum, which covers the surface of the malaria sporozoite and is the best characterized of current vaccine candidates.