[Achievements and problems in the development of malaria vaccines]

Malaria continues as a public health problem in the world. The control strategy by insecticides against the vector arthropod and antimalaria drugs have not been enough to eradicate this illness, which is the cause of over a million deaths every year throughout the world. In the latest years the recombinant DNA technology and the synthesis of peptides for antimalaria vaccine elaboration has been used specially against Plasmodium falciparum, which is the most aggressive of the human species of Plasmodium. Encouraging results in this field have been obtained. Some molecules have been characterized and synthetized which are considered worthy vaccine candidates because of their suitable immunogenicity, safety and immunoprotective capacity. These molecules belong to sexual and merozoite phases of the parasite, meanwhile molecules isolated from the sporozoitic phase, such as circunsporozoitic protein, have posed the greatest problems for the vaccine development.