I can respect anyone who works at the same thing for a quarter of a century. I haven't even spent 24 years being alive, let alone focusing on a singular task, but Joe Cohen has put that much time into one goal: to rid the world of malaria. And this month, he finally saw his work pay off. 

Cohen, a GlaxoSmithKline research scientist, has spent most of his time working in Belgium for the past two and a half decades. He runs a GSK laboratory out there, where he and his team struggled to develop a vaccine to prevent the deadly disease. After recent trials in Africa, where malaria takes the greatest number of lives, they have finally declared the RTS,S vaccine a success. GSK worked alongside the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative in testing the vaccine in over 16,000 children across seven different countries. 

Malaria kills more than 780,000 people every year. Most of them are babies and toddlers who are not yet strong enough to fight off the infection. The disease is caused by a parasite in mosquito saliva, making the insect's bite deadly to many unlucky individuals. Netting initiatives have reduced the number of malaria-related deaths over the years, but too many children still die from the illness. Cohen hopes to reduce that number even further with his vaccine, which will be sold under the name Mosquirix.

The vaccine doesn't prevent the parasitic infection, but it helps stave it off by teaching the immune system to respond to its presence. If the immune system's defense can kill off the parasite quickly enough, it won't have time to grow to maturity and multiply. By using the body's own immune response to nip the infection in the bud, the vaccine could prevent up to 50% of malaria deaths.

It's not a cure-all: only half of all recipients of the vaccine have been able to fight off the disease so far. But that's still 8,000 kids who aren't dying from malaria--that's a big deal. A 50% success rate is a pretty great one when it comes to preventing a deadly disease from killing babies. Joe Cohen and his GSK team have a whole lot to be proud of.

Cohen and the MVI are currently working on licensing the vaccine for distribution. Getting it out there and into the hands of those who need it most would be the next big step on this initiative, but if all goes according to plan, Mosquirix will begin distribution in 2015.