Modifying Mosquitos to Prevent Malaria

Mosquito-borne malaria kills over 600,000 people each year, mostly children. Treatments and anti-mosquito measures such as mosquito nets have reduced the death toll, but rates rose during the COVID-19 pandemic when social disruptions stymied healthcare systems and organizations dedicated to malaria prevention.

Now, scientists say they have a more permanent solution to the problem. By inserting genes that make anti-malaria antibodies into mosquitos, the researchers have inoculated not only that generation of mosquitos, but their offspring and their offspring’s offspring against carrying and passing on the malaria parasite.

Releasing batches of these genetically modified mosquitos into the wild could reduce new human malaria infections by over 90% within three months, according to modeling published in the journal PNAS. That would represent some 216 million fewer cases a year, given that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are approximately 240 million new malaria cases annually.

Led by study leader Anthony James, a molecular geneticist at the Univ. of California, Irvine, a team of researchers developed what’s called a “gene drive” system to alter mosquito genomes in a way that would spread throughout the population rapidly. Malaria spreads when a mosquito bites an infected person, and the mosquito itself becomes infected with the parasite that causes the disease...