Sanaria

Sanaria is a biotechnology company dedicated to the production of whole parasite vaccines protective against malaria, as well as related products for use in malaria research. Sanaria’s vaccines are based on the use of the sporozoite stage of the Plasmodium parasite as immunogen, an approach to immunization that has already proven highly protective in humans when delivered by the bite of mosquitoes. Sanaria has developed the technology to grow and harvest large quantities of aseptic, purified Plasmodium sporozoites and formulate them for use in vaccines for human use. Sanaria's initial candidate vaccine is called Sanaria^{Superscript textR} PfSPZ, and uses radiation attenuated Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites as immunogen. Sanaria is developing other vaccines, including Sanaria^{Superscript textR}CVac , which uses unattenuated sporozoites in the presence of antimalarial drugs as immunogen; genetically attenuated sporozoites as immunogen, and other species of Plasmodium in al these formulations.

History

Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, Dr. Stephen Hoffman founded Sanaria Inc. in 2003. Dr. Hoffman is an internationally recognized expert in tropical medicine and vaccine development. From 1987-2000 he was director of the U.S. Navy’s Malaria Research and Development Program. From 2000-2002 he was Senior VP Biologics at Celera Genomics. He is past president of American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, a member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), the most highly cited author in the world for scientific papers published on malaria from 1995 to 2005, author of more than >400 scientific publications, and inventor on 15 U.S. and 58 patents worldwide.

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