Genetically-modified mosquitoes 'could aid malaria fight'
20/06/2008
Hopes are rising that genetically-modified mosquitoes could one day be the key to overcoming the global malaria epidemic.
With the disease claiming more than one million lives every year - mostly malnourished children in sub-Saharan Africa - scientists have begun exploring ever-more innovative avenues of research.
The latest technique being looked at by Imperial College centres on changing the genetic make-up of mosquitoes, the vectors which transport the malaria-causing plasmodium falciparum parasite.
"We don't have things we can rely on," admitted researcher Andrea Crisanti in an interview with the Associated Press. "It's time to try something else."
Until now, anti-malaria research has largely centred on the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, which protect vulnerable people while they sleep.
But while such programmes have been hailed as hugely successful - with infection levels falling by as much as 90 per cent in high-coverage areas - they offer little in the way of a long-term solution.
Seeking to rectify that situation, Imperial College is using its sponsorship from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to investigate ways of making mosquitoes immune to the disease.
"This is one of those high-tech, high-risk innovations that would fundamentally change the struggle between humans and mosquitoes," asserted Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development at the foundation.
But as Jo Lines of London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine notes, even if the trials prove successful the challenges facing scientists will still be immense.
"You are going to need to produce billions of these mosquitoes if this is ever going to work," she concluded, summing up the battle so far as "a series of arms races that the parasite has consistently won".
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