Pushing the Frontiers of Vaccine Science: Professor Jake Baum’s Mission to Combat Malaria
In 2023, Professor Jake Baum received the Frontiers Research Award sponsored by ANU, recognising his groundbreaking work advancing new approaches to malaria research, diagnostics and vaccine development.
A parasitologist and cell biologist, Professor Baum has spent more than two decades working to understand the biology of the malaria parasite and translate those discoveries into practical tools to combat one of the world’s most devastating infectious diseases.
Malaria continues to kill more than 600,000 people each year, most of them children under five in low-income countries. While progress has been made in reducing global deaths, growing drug resistance and changes in mosquito populations threaten to reverse these gains, creating an urgent need for new scientific solutions.
Professor Baum’s research has focused on tackling this challenge through innovative approaches to parasite biology, drug discovery and vaccine development.
Early in his career, while working at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Professor Baum co-discovered PfRH5, a key protein involved in how the malaria parasite invades human red blood cells. The discovery has since emerged as one of the leading targets for a next-generation malaria vaccine.
Over the past decade, his laboratory has continued to push the boundaries of malaria research, developing new technologies aimed at accelerating both diagnostics and vaccine development.
Rethinking How Malaria Vaccines Are Made
One of the most significant recent innovations from Professor Baum’s team is MalPure, a new method designed to overcome a long-standing bottleneck in malaria vaccine production.
For decades, producing whole-parasite malaria vaccines has relied on painstaking manual dissection of infected mosquitoes—a process that is slow, costly and difficult to scale.
MalPure reimagines this process entirely.
Instead of manual dissection, the technique uses a series of purification steps to extract parasites from infected mosquitoes at scale, producing a highly purified product suitable for vaccine development.
In pre-clinical studies, vaccines produced using this method have demonstrated complete immune protection, highlighting its potential as a major advance in malaria vaccine development.
Translating Discovery into Global Impact
Professor Baum’s research has attracted strong international support, including innovation funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reflecting the global importance of developing new tools to combat malaria.
Alongside vaccine development, his team has also contributed to the advancement of transmission-blocking drugs and point-of-care diagnostic technologies, helping build a broader toolkit to control and ultimately eliminate the disease.
Now based at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he leads the School of Biomedical Sciences, Professor Baum continues to drive collaborative research aimed at translating scientific discoveries into real-world health solutions.
Recognition for Frontier Research
Receiving the Frontiers Research Award was an important moment of recognition for Professor Baum and his team’s efforts to push the boundaries of vaccine science.
“Receiving a Research Australia Award, especially one focused on frontier science, was important for my research team and our work on malaria vaccines,” Professor Baum said.
“It meant recognition not just for what we’ve done in the past, but perhaps more importantly as a research community endorsement of our efforts working on the edge of what is often possible in science.”
Working at the frontiers of research often involves uncertainty and risk, but Professor Baum says the potential impact makes the challenge worthwhile.
“It involves my team risking more failure than success, building complex models and infrastructure over years, all in the hope that we will break new ground and advance a vaccine that hasn’t been possible before.”
While the work continues, early results from the team’s latest vaccine designs are showing promising signs.
“The recognition from Research Australia is part of this, encouraging us to keep going on the frontiers of vaccine science.”
2026 Research Australia Awards
Professor Baum’s work highlights the vital role of bold scientific innovation in addressing some of the world’s most urgent health challenges.