“Breakthrough as highly effective malaria vaccine raises hopes of controlling disease”

The vaccine, developed by Oxford and known as R21, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months, the university said in a statement. It said the shot was the first to meet the World Health Organization's Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap goal of a malaria vaccine with at least 75% efficacy.

"These are very exciting results showing unprecedented efficacy levels from a vaccine that has been well tolerated in our trial programme," Halidou Tinto, the trial's principal investigator, said in a statement. "We look forward to the upcoming Phase III trial to demonstrate large-scale safety and efficacy data for a vaccine that is greatly needed in this region."

The study inoculated 450 children between the ages of 5 to 17 months. They were split into three groups, and researchers reported the higher dose group were 77% less likely to get the disease, "and 71% in the lower dose adjuvant group, over 12 months of follow-up," the statement said.

It was noted that there were "no serious adverse events related to the vaccine," the statement added.