Despite being a preventable and treatable disease, malaria is currently affecting the lives of more than 200 million people. This results in over half a million deaths per year, with 80% of this mortality occurring in children under the age of 5.
The ability of mosquitoes to transmit malaria is genetically determined. Factors such as longevity, feeding behavior, parasite development, and reproduction are all important elements that influence the likelihood of a mosquito to transmit malaria to a human. For example, the longer a mosquito lives, the higher the chance that mosquito has of biting a human and transmitting malaria. The more mosquitoes reproduce, the more mosquitoes there are, thus increasing the probability of transmission. The rationale behind the Target Malaria approach is that if it is true that these features are genetically determined, then perhaps the genes that are responsible for these features can be modified to impair the vectoral capacity of mosquitoes.
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The team has had good success at genetic engineering and modifying the genome of mosquitoes over the past few years. However, for this approach to translate into a reduction of malaria infections and mortality, the team must be able to modify the genome of these organisms, and spread this genetic modification from just a few individuals to a much larger population in the wild.
