Ending malaria in our lifetime is now a genuine scientific possibility, and NIAID-supported research is helping make it happen. Over the past year, NIAID scientists and grantees have delivered hundreds of advances that attack the disease from nearly every angle. Here is a look at five of the many that stand out.
Rethinking the Bed Net
Insecticide-treated bed nets have been one of the greatest success stories in malaria control, but the mosquitoes that transmit malaria are increasingly resistant to insecticides, threatening to render those nets little more than fabric. NIAID-supported scientists may have found a way to give them a second life.
Rather than using bed nets to target the mosquito, the researchers went after the malaria parasite living inside it. After screening 81 antiparasitic compounds, they identified two drug candidates that attack different sites on the same parasite protein. They showed that mosquitoes can absorb these compounds simply by landing on a treated surface. When embedded into bed net-like materials at low concentrations, the compounds stayed potent for more than a year and continued to work against insecticide-resistant mosquitoes. Even more striking: parasites that developed resistance to the drugs were so impaired they could barely spread, making resistance itself an evolutionary dead end.
A Baby's Carrier as a Shield
Bed nets protect children while they sleep. But in much of sub-Saharan Africa, infants spend daylight hours—including peak mosquito-biting hours around dawn and dusk—strapped to their mothers' backs in cloth wraps. NIAID-supported researchers wondered: what if the wrap itself could be protective?
In a trial in Uganda involving 400 mother-infant pairs, half received wraps treated with permethrin, a common insect repellent, while the other half received wraps soaked in plain water. All participants also used standard bed nets. After six months, infants in the permethrin group had roughly two-thirds fewer malaria cases and half as many malaria hospitalizations, with no change in behavior required.
A Single Infusion Stops Malaria in Its Tracks
Perhaps the most dramatic finding comes from a clinical trial in Mali, where a single infusion of an antibody discovered and developed at NIAID offered near-complete protection from malaria for adults across a full six-month transmission season. In a region where nearly 90 percent of the placebo group became infected, one high dose of the antibody reduced new infections by 87 percent, including gametocytes, the parasite form that mosquitoes pick up when transmitting malaria. These results signal strong real-world evidence that monoclonal antibodies could prevent both malaria disease and onward transmission, potentially becoming a powerful new tool in the push toward malaria elimination.
A Preconception Shot Protects Babies
African children don't complete their primary series of approved malaria vaccines until 7 months of age or older, leaving newborns and young infants vulnerable. When NIAID researchers found that a candidate malaria vaccine called PfSPZ Vaccine protected pregnant women in a clinical trial in Mali, they wondered whether the babies might be shielded, too.
Sure enough, the babies whose moms got the vaccine before becoming pregnant had fewer malaria infections and fewer malaria illnesses during their first year of life than those whose moms got a placebo shot. The most exciting results came from a lower vaccine dose, which gave the infants an estimated 72% protection from malaria infection and 96% protection from clinical malaria. Just as encouraging, other health issues in the babies occurred at similar rates across groups and were mostly mild, supporting the safety of giving the PfSPZ Vaccine before conception.
An Early Warning in the Genome
Sometimes the most important advance is knowing a threat is forming before it becomes a crisis.
From blood samples donated by Cambodian malaria patients, NIAID researchers and colleagues sequenced the genomes of more than 200 Plasmodium vivax parasites, responsible for most malaria cases outside Africa, and found an unsettling pattern. More than 80 percent carried a small genetic deletion that caused them to produce twice as much of the instructions for a drug-resistance protein called MDR1. Lab tests showed these parasites were less susceptible to mefloquine, Cambodia's frontline treatment since 2016, and the deletion became dramatically more common right after mefloquine was introduced. The findings illuminate a broader lesson: drug resistance can emerge from changes in how much of a protein gets made, not just its structure, meaning surveillance programs that look only for known mutations may miss the next threat.
From smarter bed nets and a mother's everyday cloth carrier to genomic surveillance and precision biologics, these advances span the arc of the malaria challenge. Ending this ancient disease is within reach, and NIAID-supported science is helping lead the way.
References
AS Probst et al. In vivo screen of Plasmodium targets for mosquito-based malaria control. Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09039-2 (2025)
RM Boyce et al. Permethrin-treated baby wraps for the prevention of malaria. New England Journal of Medicine DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2501628 (2025)
J Skinner et al. Anti-sporozoite monoclonal antibody for malaria prevention: secondary efficacy outcome of a phase 2 randomized trial. Nature Medicine DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03739-y (2025)
H Diawara et al. Safety and efficacy of PfSPZ Vaccine against malaria in healthy adults and women anticipating pregnancy in Mali: two randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1 and 2 trials. Lancet Infectious Diseases DOI: 10.1016/S1473-3099(24)00360-8 (2024)
K Ko et al. A common DNA deletion altering the 3’UTR of mdr1 is associated with reduced mefloquine susceptibility in P. vivax parasites from Cambodian patients. Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-68456-7 (2026)