EUROMALVAC

European
Malaria
Vaccine
Consortium

EM
VC

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Dr Anthony Holder

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Dr Tony Holder is the Head of the Division of Parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, which has a staff of about 45 devoted almost exclusively to malaria research. Dr Holder co-ordinates the pre-clinical development phase of the EUROMALVAC project. He is primarily responsible for overseeing the structural and functional studies of MSP-1, for optimisation of its expression and for improving its vaccine potential. He will direct the efforts to improve the immunogenicity and antigenicity of MSP-119 by modification of the protein, the production of MSP-1 specific scFvs, gene resynthesis and the development of large-scale protein production. Similar work will also be carried out with the AMA-1 molecule.

This approach will integrate the work of many research groups, both at NIMR and with other members of the EUROMALVAC Consortium.

Dr Holder co-ordinates this work with other partners in the Consortium, collaborating with Dr Graham Mitchell (Guy's Hospital, London), Drs Shirley Longacre and Graham Bentley (Institut Pasteur, Paris) for MSP-1 studies, and with Dr Alan Thomas (BPRC, Netherlands) for AMA-1 studies.

Dr Holder's group works closely with several other groups at NIMR:
Dr Mike Blackman's group is responsible for the application and development of in vitro assays that correlate with immunity to MSP-1. Dr Jean Langhorne is responsible for studies on the immunogenicity of modified and improved MSP-1 molecules. Dr James Feeney and Dr William Morgan provide NMR facilities to the group, carry out structural studies on fragments of MSP-1 and AMA-1 and perform rapid NMR analysis of MSP1-19 antibody complexes. Prof G.G. Dodson directs the crystal structure analysis of MSP1-42 and antibody complexes.

Tony Holder has worked for 20 years on malaria, focusing on erythrocyte invasion and vaccine development. Together with various colleagues he was the first to show that MSP-1 could be used as a vaccine, and to clone the MSP-1 gene. With Dr Blackman, he has shown that MSP-1 processing is a crucial event in erythrocyte invasion that can be blocked by antibody binding, and together they have described a novel mechanism of immune evasion.