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The Consortium's projects are at present concerned with the discovery, validation and preclinical development phases of malaria vaccine development. They aim to build on the best of the blood stage malaria vaccine work that has gone before and are based on a clear understanding of the criteria that need to be applied to move a vaccine candidate from the discovery phase to the development phase. An integrated programme is being built up which can consider evidence from numerous fields from sero-epidemiological studies to antigen engineering. The guiding principle is that of the evidence-based decision making.

There is no doubt that European malaria vaccine research has been hampered by the lack of infrastructure to carry basic research through to clinical studies. The consortium is therefore based on an agreed malaria vaccine development pathway and each of its constituent projects work packages are constructed to meet the following basic requirements:

• The application of stringent criteria to define the candidacy of any individual antigen for vaccine development.
• The use of detailed understanding of the biological processes of the parasite-host interaction to define important targets for vaccine development.
• The identification of mechanisms of immune evasion by the parasite and rational approaches to overcome them.
• The use of the very powerful structure-function approach to inform the process of antigen selection and improvement.
• The identification and combination of the best targets for vaccine development to facilitate a multi-stage, multi-component approach.