by Abdoulaye Diabate faced a life-threatening bout of malaria when he was just five years old. Diabate narrowly survived the mosquito-borne disease, but his three- and four-year-old cousins were not so lucky.
Diabate, who now heads medical entomology and parasitology at the Burkina Faso Health Sciences Research Institute, is developing an innovative technique that could eliminate malaria-transmitting mosquito species by altering their genes.
The Burkina Faso-born scientist and professor received the 2023 Falling Walls Science and Innovation Management Award for his research, which organizers say “offers hope for malaria control.”
Diabate was named in September as the only African among 10 global winners of this year’s prestigious award and was also recognized by the Falling Walls Foundation for “contributing to some of the world’s most advanced work on genetic solutions to malaria.”
The Falling Walls Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering innovative thinking.
One of the main causes of death
Malaria is a leading cause of death in the country of Diabate, where nearly all of the West African nation’s 22 million people, especially children, are at risk of contracting the disease, according to the World Health Organization. .
Malaria killed nearly 19,000 people in Burkina Faso in 2021, the latest data from the WHO regional office for Africa showed.
The disease is also a leading cause of death in the wider African region, which bears the largest malaria burden in the world.
For many years, malaria control interventions, including the use of insecticide-treated nets, have helped reduce transmission and deaths in affected countries.
However, “malaria deaths remain unacceptably high and cases have continued to rise since 2015,” the WHO said in April, adding that the rise in infections was due to the rising cost of providing such interventions, as well as “ “biological threats” that enable drug resistance and help mosquito vectors develop immunity to insecticides.
Malaria is estimated to have killed around 619,000 people worldwide in 2021, according to the latest data released by the WHO.
About 96 percent of those deaths occurred in Africa, the health body said, adding that 80 percent of the victims on the continent “occurred among children under five years of age.”
Diabate told CNN that innovating malaria control tools was the only way to defeat the disease.
“Although mosquito nets are doing a fantastic job… we now have widespread resistance to insecticides in different species of mosquitoes, specifically those that transmit malaria,” he said.
“This makes it difficult to defeat malaria with these conventional tools. That is why it is extremely important to innovate and get new tools that can complement existing ones. (Otherwise) there is no way we could beat malaria.”
The ‘game changer’
Diabate said he is optimistic that his vector control tool for malaria, described as “gene drive technology,” could be a “game changer” when implemented.
Malaria is transmitted through the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes that are infected with the parasitic disease. Male mosquitoes do not bite, so they cannot transmit malaria.
With gene drive, female mosquito species that transmit the disease are prevented from producing new female offspring by releasing genetically edited males that become sterile in the environment.
Diabate said the population of female mosquitoes would be reduced and malaria transmission would be stopped.
“When the (genetically modified) mosquitoes are released into the field… they will spread throughout the mosquito population and cut off malaria transmission immediately,” he said, adding that gene drive was a malaria control intervention. more sustainable and economical.
“The genetically modified mosquitoes are the ones that do the work for you…unlike other (malaria control) interventions where humans run from one place to another to deliver.
“The good thing about this technology we are developing is that if it works as expected, it will not only be cost-effective, but it will also be sustainable and can be deployed in remote and hard-to-reach areas in Africa. . We believe that once the technology is ready, we launch it and it works as expected, it should be a game-changer.”
However, it may take a few more years to implement gene drive technology in Africa, Diabate said.
In 2019, Diabate’s vector control research alliance, Target Malaria, carried out the first phase of the project by releasing Africa’s pioneering batch of genetically modified mosquitoes in Bana, a village in western Burkina Faso.
More than 14,000 sterile male mosquitoes were released on the same day during the controlled release, according to Target Malaria, which added that 527 of the released mosquitoes were recaptured after 20 days.
“While the publication was not intended to impact malaria transmission, it was a step forward for the team to gather information, develop knowledge, and build local skills,” the research alliance further said in a blog post, adding that ” “This analysis and data collected is providing invaluable insights that we are already using in the next phases of our research.”
There have been similar projects targeting mosquito DNA.
In 2013, an American biotechnology company, Oxitec, developed genetically modified mosquitoes that transmit a deadly gene to the female species of the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits yellow fever, as well as dengue and Zika viruses.
The offspring of genetically modified female mosquitoes die in the larval stage.
In 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency also launched an X-ray-powered technique to sterilize male mosquitoes in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the goal of reducing the reproduction of female offspring that transmit Zika.
Diabate’s research appears to be among the first to use gene editing to target male mosquitoes.
Ecological concerns
Health authorities outside Burkina Faso have welcomed Diabate’s gene drive technology, but questions remain about its impact on the environment when it is fully released.
Lumbani Munthali, director of Malawi’s National Malaria Control Program, told CNN that although gene drive technology is “a good innovation that comes at the right time,” its ecological impact is unknown.
“Gene drive technology is all about modifying genetic materials…so you never know what new vector you will have and what this will mean for the environment or ecology,” he said. “It’s something researchers need to look into.”
Germany-based advocacy group Save Our Seeds (SOS) has campaigned strongly against gene drive technology, saying its impact on ecosystems cannot be predicted.
“Every living being, even if it seems dangerous or harmful to humans, fulfills important tasks in its habitat,” SOS states on its website. “The extermination or even manipulation of a species will therefore have consequences for the entire ecosystem,” she added.
The advocacy group explained that mosquitoes are among the main food sources for many animals such as birds and dragonflies, while recalling that “in the Camargue, a nature reserve in the south of France, the annihilation of mosquitoes with a biological pesticide…led to a reduction in the number and diversity of birds and dragonflies.”
Diabate told CNN that “specific concerns” about gene drive technology will be “taken into account in the development process” of the project.
CNN has contacted the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for comment on the safety of gene drive technology.
Diabaté said he has dedicated his life to fighting malaria, which he said affected his personal life.
“Malaria has affected every aspect of my personal life: from almost dying from the disease when I was a young child to caring for my loved ones whenever they get sick. That is why I have decided to dedicate my life to fighting this disease that is stifling the development of Africa and ruining the future of millions of African lives,” he stated.
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