The discovery of natural killer (NK) cells adds to the knowledge of how natural immunity to malaria develops in people living in areas where the parasite is common and provides a new mechanism that could be exploited in the mission to create a malaria vaccine. One of the main objectives in malaria research is to define the mechanisms by which naturally acquired antibodies provide protection said lead author Gunjan Arora from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the US. NK cells have been known to kill virus-infected cells and cancer cells but a clear role for
