A Dublin-born scientist has won a prestigious international award for helping to develop a malaria vaccine.
The European Patent Office awarded Adrian Hill the European Inventor Award in the research category for developing the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine.
The Irish-British scientist received the accolade at a ceremony in Berlin on Thursday.
“I am delighted to accept this prestigious award on behalf of the many hundreds of people who have contributed to the discovery, development and licensure of our malaria vaccine over the past 12 years,” he said.
RM Block
Hill studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin before completing a DPhil in human genetics at Oxford. The scientist also helped to develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
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He received an honorary knighthood from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 2021 for services to science and public health.
There were an estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2024, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Children under five account for about 75 per cent of malaria deaths in Africa.
Scientists have been attempting to develop a vaccine for more than a century. Traditional malaria vaccines achieved only modest or short-lived protection, often reaching 30–50 per cent efficacy in young children.
Hill and his team developed a vaccine that presents more of the malaria-specific protein regions needed to trigger a strong immune response, helping to achieve around 75–80 per cent protection in clinical trials.
The vaccine can be produced at large scale, costs less than €3 per dose and remains stable for up to two years under standard refrigeration conditions, helping make vaccination programmes more accessible in regions where malaria remains endemic.
Hill’s interest in developing a malaria vaccine stems from his experience working as a researcher at a hospital in The Gambia in the late 1980s.
“I saw children dying from malaria right in front of me. That experience stayed with me and convinced me that we needed something better than what was available,” he said in a statement.
Over the following three decades, Hill’s team at Oxford’s Jenner Institute investigated multiple vaccine options before developing R21/Matrix-M.
Ghana became the first country to approve the vaccine in 2023, followed by Nigeria. Later that year, the WHO formally recommended it for widespread use.
Malaria vaccination is currently being integrated into routine immunisation programmes in more than 20 African countries, reducing malaria-related illness and deaths.
The European Inventor Award recognises innovators across different disciplines.
The other finalists in Hill’s category were Portuguese researcher Paula Videira and her team for developing a high-precision antibody that distinguishes cancer cells from healthy tissue and Finnish physicist Mikko Möttönen for creating an ultrasensitive cryogenic microwave sensor that improves quantum computing hardware.
