Genetically modified mosquitos could be used to spread vaccine for malaria

Genetically modified mosquitos could be used to spread vaccine for malaria

Just found this article on a technological breakthrough that, if viable, will be just like the invention of sliced bread for the human race!

Experts believe "flying vaccinators" could eventually be a radical new way of tackling malaria.

The new approach targets the salivary gland of the Anopheles mosquito. Scientists in Japan have engineered an insect producing a natural vaccine protein in its saliva which is injected into the bloodstream when it bites.

The "prototype" mosquito carries a vaccine against Leishmania, another potentially fatal parasite disease spread by sand flies. Leishmania infection can cause painful sores, fever and weight loss and if untreated may destroy the liver and spleen. Mice bitten by the vaccinating insect generated antibodies against the Leishmania organism, indicating immunisation.

"Following bites, protective immune responses are induced, just like a conventional vaccination but with no pain and no cost," said study leader Professor Shigeto Yoshida, from Jichi Medical University in Shimotsuki, Japan.

"What's more, continuous exposure to bites will maintain high levels of protective immunity, through natural boosting, for a life time. So the insect shifts from being a pest to being beneficial."

The research is reported in the journal Insect Molecular Biology.

Scientists are still working on developing an effective malaria vaccine, so Prof Yoshida's study was very much a "proof of concept".

Ethical considerations may also get in the way of using "flying vaccinators" to control malaria, he said. Such a strategy would involve the mass delivery of a vaccine without first obtaining the consent of patients or monitoring dosages. Each year malaria claims between one and two million lives around the world, mostly of African children.

The disease is caused by a single-celled parasite spread by the Anopheles mosquito. Scientists have looked at a number of ways of genetically modifying the insect to stop it transmitting the organism. They include making male mosquitoes infertile, and creating a malaria-free insect that will out-survive the carriers.

But the major problem would be the people. How would you tell a vaccine carrier mosquito between a normal mosquito? Yeah just waste all that money for the manufacturing of each mosquito, only to have them swatted down by the people they were trying to help.

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to fly a bunch of vaccines to Africa? If we could just get to warlords to let us pass them out we could start saving lives much sooner.

What's going to stop them from putting birth control stuff or diseases in these mosquitos?

We just shouldn't mess with nature, we just don't know enough about nature to do these things.

I can't believe that this topic died. It's about vaccines and genetic engineering!

and then mutated lab modified insects bite us randomly and we can't stop them and then we mutate ourselves into something else and we're like transformed into something less than human with tentacles and stuff and we're forced to work in mines in afghanistan mining valuable minerals and we don't mind cos were like artificially modified dumb sub-people who like nod and drool and and live off waste out of dumpsites and toilets and all the time these bugs are like biting us and stuff and were not talking and our overlords are like having blue light traps to stop the insects biting them and loads of bugspray... wow nearly lost it there, a real good idea that one...mutated vaccine bugs indeed. Not much to go wrong there is there...