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Manuel Elkin Patarroyo is a Colombian pathologist who made the world's first attempt to create a synthetic vaccine for malaria, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes that affects millions of people in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The vaccine candidate, first developed in 1987, was evaluated in clinical trials carried out by the WHO in Gambia, Tanzania and Thailand, and had mixed results. In 2009, a comprehensive Cochrane review assessed the SPf66 as being not efficacious in Africa and Asia, and as having a low but statistically significant efficacy of 28% in South America. Today, after more than 33 years of research, there is still however "no licensed malaria vaccine. Researchers, clinical trialists and vaccine developers have been working on many approaches to bring forward the availability of a malaria vaccine." More research and clinical trials are required for a universal vaccine to be implemented.
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