Direct ex vivo identification of human malaria-vaccine antigen-specific CD8+ T cells, by labelling with cognate tetramers expressing class I- restricted vaccine antigen epitopes, should be feasible for CD8+ T cells induced by subunit vaccines expressing a known malaria antigen, with the proviso that there could be greater than one T cell epitope per antigen and, in the case of a vaccine trial, one would have to take into account the class I genetic diversity of the cohort of volunteers. Here, CD8A is linked to malaria.