Malaria is a mosquito-transmitted infectious disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite. There are four types of human malaria's parasites, but the most serious forms are the P. Falciparum and P. Vivax.

Everyone can be infected but children, pregnant women and travelers are the most susceptible to infection.

Malaria is one of the most deadly infectious pathogens worldwide, killing over 1 million people every year.

The Plasmodium has two parasite forms:
- After the mosquito bite, the transmitted parasites exist in a pre-erythrocytic form called “sporozoites” which rapidly migrate (within less than 30 minutes) to the liver where they infect the liver cells and replicate.
- During replication in the liver, sporozoites change into "merozoites" and are released from the infected liver cells. These merozoites then infect the red blood cells (erythrocytes), causing typical malaria symptoms such as fever and anemia.

An effective malaria vaccine should ideally induce protection by acting on both parasite forms. Mymetics' malaria vaccine aims to induce double protection by:
- Preventing sporozoites from infecting the liver cells where they mature into, highly infectious merozoites
- Preventing merozoites from infecting red blood cells where they intensively propogate, and mature to their final "human to mosquito" transmissible gametocytes form