A malaria vaccine trial in Burkina Faso _______(1) shown promising results for the fight against the disease, which killed more than 400,000 people in 2019. The results of the trial, published on Preprints with The Lancet and currently awaiting peer review, ______(2) that the R21/Matrix-M vaccine had 77% efficacy over 12 months of follow-up. It is the first vaccine to meet the World Health Organization's (WHO) Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap goal of a vaccine with at least 75% efficacy. The trial involved 450 children, aged 5-17 months. Participants were split into three groups — the first two groups received the R21/Matrix-M, with _______(3) a low dose or high dose of Matrix-M, and the control group got a rabies vaccine. Vaccine efficacy in the group with a lower dose of Matrix-M was 71% and no serious side effects were noted. The researchers have now started recruitment for a bigger trial to assess large-scale safety and efficacy in 4,800 children, aged 5-36 months, across four African countries. The trial is "highly encouraging," said Julian Rayner, a malaria researcher and the director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research ______(4) the University of Cambridge in the UK, who was not involved in the study. "It's an early-stage trial, the data from that trial is very encouraging but it's a [small] number of children and so it provides clear justification ________(5) on to bigger trials in other locations," Rayner told DW.