Researchers at the Bill Gates Foundation-backed Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands have joined an international effort to transform mosquitoes into flying syringes. According to a study published late last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, they apparently now have an effective way of using mosquitoes to deliver some protection against malaria in unsuspecting humans — and possibly other payloads in the future as well.
Scientists have long toyed with the idea of transforming mosquitoes into “flying vaccinator[s].”
Shigeto Yoshida, the lead researcher on a 2010 study that modified mosquitoes’ saliva such that they would deliver leishmania vaccines to mice when sucking their blood, noted that vaccination by insect was “just like a conventional vaccination but with no pain and no cost.”
“What’s more, continuous exposure to bites will maintain high levels of protective immunity, through natural boosting, for a lifetime. So the insect shifts from being a pest to being beneficial,” added Yoshida.
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