Design of Nanoparticle-Based Antigens as Multivalent, Multivariant, Low-Polymorphism Blood-Stage Malaria Vaccine Candidates

Several protein-specific domains, such as intrinsically disordered domains and -helical segments have been described as promising targets for malaria blood stage vaccine candidates.Used alone or in combination, these protein domains have been shown in numerous studies to be antigenic/immunogenic and correlated with protection against clinical malaria.However, their potential as part of an approach to develop a single multivalent, multispecific vaccine antigen based on self-assembled protein nanoparticle (SAPN) delivery system is less explored.Here, using a designed SAPN model, we discuss the relevance of a P27/ P27A nanoparticle-based blood stage antigen with other blood stage antigens, such as the dimorphic and C-terminal domain fragments of the two PfMSP2 allelic families.Thus, the goal of this work is to promote studies investigating the stability, safety, and protective properties of multivalent nanoparticle malaria vaccines against the two major malaria pathogens.Therefore, we postulate that the combination of the -helical coiled-coil and unstructured antigens into SAPN constructs will yield a promising blood stage malaria vaccine candidate to protect against both P. falciparum and P. vivax infections.