Project description
How insecticides impact malaria control in Africa
The Plasmodium falciparum parasite, responsible for malaria, is transmitted through Anopheles mosquitoes, leading to numerous cases and fatalities, especially in Africa. Whilst insecticide-treated bed nets represent the most efficacious approach for case reduction, challenges arise from mosquito and parasite drug resistance. Despite the importance of mosquito control, the relative impact on parasite development remains unknown. The ERC-funded ReMVeC project will assess the impact of insecticide usage on parasite development, including importance of vector species, insecticide resistance, and exposure. Furthermore, it will determine the impact of parasite drug resistance mutations on transmissibility through the mosquito host. The project will also determine the interplay between response to parasite infection and insecticide exposure to determine new potential candidates for vector control.
Objective
The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is responsible for more than 200 million cases and 400.000 deaths each year, with over 90% of cases occurring in Africa. The parasite is reliant upon Anopheline mosquitoes for transmission and insecticide treated bed nets targeting these mosquitoes represent the single most efficacious way to reduce case numbers and hence deaths. However, due to the use of pyrethroid insecticides on all distributed insecticide treated bed nets, insecticide resistance now threatens the impact of these interventions. Analogously, deaths from active malaria cases have been decreasing through the successful use of drug therapy; however, resistance to every class of front-line drug has now been described. Incredibly, we simply do not know the impact of current vector control tools on parasite development nor the impact of drug resistance on development within the mosquito vector, despite fine scale characterisation in the erythrocytic stages. With the stalling of progress in malaria elimination and the addition of new chemistries to insecticide treated bed nets, it is time that we invested in understanding precisely how our current vector control tools affect the parasite in order to avoid catastrophic failure of malaria control. To this end, I propose to: (i) Determine the impact of insecticide use on parasite development in the contexts of species replacement, insecticide resistance and insecticide exposure; (ii) Elucidate the changes due to parasite drug resistance on mosquito-stage development; (iii) Ascertain genetic interplay between mosquito immunity and response to insecticides to identify new targets that negatively affect insecticide resistance and parasite development. The results generated from this multidisciplinary proposal will redefine our understanding of factors determining vector competence under contemporary transmission settings and will identify alternative options for intervention.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
69120 Heidelberg
Germany