Project Title: Rearing Anopheles Mosquitoes without Blood for Malaria Research and control
Project Description: Mosquito rearing in captivity is a major bottleneck and is highly dependent on successfully replicating the mosquito lifecycle, an subsequent use of high blood quantities. The use of blood constitutes a strong drawback due ethical , financial and logistic issues, mainly when we think about animal welfare and ethics; Right rules and Responsibilities (RRR) policies; ethical and security implications for the use of human blood and not-the least, the associated cost. new approaches for Blood-free-meals... Mosquito rearing in captivity is a major bottleneck and is highly dependent on successfully replicating the mosquito lifecycle, an subsequent use of high blood quantities. The use of blood constitutes a strong drawback due ethical , financial and logistic issues, mainly when we think about animal welfare and ethics; Right rules and Responsibilities (RRR) policies; ethical and security implications for the use of human blood and not-the least, the associated cost. new approaches for Blood-free-meals that are cheap and of simple and reproducible formulation are priority to accelerate progress toward malaria eradication The goal of this project is to: 1) Optimize a blood-free meal that sustain multiple generations of mosquito without loss of fitness relative to colonies maintained on fresh -blood; 2) test the use and sustainability of the blood-free meal to rear different Anopheles spp. and their applicability in various African context; 3) prove blood-free system adequacy for sustainable experimental infection with plasmodium spp.; 4) consolidate a network of insectaries able to develop and implement research on malaria transmission.
Principal Investigator : Brian Tarimo
Department Name :
Time frame: (2021-01-01) - (2024-12-31)
Fundacao Para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) (Prime)
Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) (Prime)
External Collaborating Partners
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Instituto de Higiene e Medicine Tropical, Global Health and Tropical Medicine Portugal (IHMT-NOVA)
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institut de Recherch en Sciences de la Sante (IRSS)