The Seattle Biomedical Research Institute needs volunteers to be bitten by a malaria-carrying mosquito in order to test vaccines; rest assured, the testing conditions are safe, the researchers only need to know which vaccines are the most effective.

Individuals willing to let themselves be stung by mosquitoes infected with malaria can receive as much as $2,000 from the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the Seattle Times reports.

The researchers stress that no lives will be in danger. The institute wishes to know which vaccines work best. The Food and Drug Administration will review all trials for human safety.

The project is being seen through by the institute in collaboration with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative. The two are opening a new vaccine-testing center in Seattle’s south Lake Union neighborhood, called the Human Challenge Center.

The center will be built this year and will focus on addressing “the burden of malaria with the goal of bringing new solutions to the world,” a press release from the institute says.

“We're particularly excited by the center's location in Seattle, a community where many people have an interest in global health issues and, as a result, are willing to volunteer for such an important cause - to help save the lives of young children in some of the world's poorest countries,” Dr. Christian Loucq, Malaria Vaccine Initiative director, said.

The head of the program, Dr. Patrick Duffy, told the Seattle Times that the financial compensation volunteers will receive is meant to make up for time and inconvenience. The sum is still to be decided on by a panel that will strive to find a balance between making it a fair amount and a tempting amount.

Once bitten, symptoms appear within 9 to 11 days and volunteers will be treated for malaria when the first parasites show up in their blood, before the virus becomes contagious. The treatments last three days. Volunteers will stay in a local hotel for several nights for daily medical tests but they will not be isolated.

A similar malaria vaccine-testing project has already been undertaken in Maryland, at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Duffy told the Times that of the hundreds of volunteers there that were infected with malaria, none were greatly ill.

Malaria kills more than a million people each year, most of them children.

For further details, go to http://www.sbri.org