Knowledge Generation

The malaria parasites' increased resistance to both medications and insecticides and environmental concerns about the use of traditional insecticides pose major challenges to decreasing the rate and breadth of infection. Dr. Bloomquist and his colleagues are using advanced molecular modeling and a novel chemical synthesis method called "click chemistry" in an effort to produce insecticides specifically targeted to the primary malaria vector mosquitoes, Anopheles gambiae. The insecticides would work by inhibiting the essential enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in mosquitoes.

Efforts to control the spread of malaria face serious challenges, including the parasite’s increased resistance to both medications and insecticides and environmental concerns about the use of traditional insecticides. Mosquitoes that spread malaria parasites use their sense of smell to find human hosts, most often by cueing in on the scent of human sweat and the carbon dioxide present in breath. Drs.

Mosquitoes that spread malaria parasites use their sense of smell to find human hosts. Dr. Zwiebel is leading an international consortium of investigators that seeks to understand and ultimately interfere with the molecular basis of the insects' sense of smell. Their work seeks to develop safe, effective and low-cost products that would either repel mosquitoes or attract them to traps. Zwiebel (Grand Challenges in Global Health: 2005-2015 retrospective)

Scientists have long known that only relatively old mosquitoes can transmit the agents that cause certain diseases, including dengue fever and malaria. Dr. O'Neill and his multinational team are working on a plan to shorten the lifespan of mosquitoes that transmit the dengue virus, which infects up to 100 million people each year. They are introducing into populations of Aedes mosquitoes, strains of a naturally occurring bacterial symbiont, Wolbachia, that kill infected insects before they are old enough to transmit disease.

The inability to ensure that newly introduced genes will become established within regional mosquito populations has been a major roadblock to the advancement of genetic strategies for vector control. Dr. Burt and his colleagues are investigating homing endonuclease genes (HEGs), so-called "parasitic" genes that can spread rapidly through mosquito populations even if they harm the host insect. This gives HEGs the potential to move newly introduced traits, such as sterility or inability to transmit disease, through a population quickly.

Approaches to controlling disease-carrying insects might include inhibiting the development of virus in the mosquito or altering the insects' lifespan so that they die before they can transmit disease. A major challenge to this approach, however, is ensuring that such strategies are effective, safe, and socially and environmentally acceptable. Dr.

Dr. Fraser's team is working to develop and test new approaches to suppressing the replication of dengue virus in the cells of its primary vector, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The team is using genetic strategies to introduce a molecular mechanism that uses the dengue virus' own genetic make-up to initiate a process that results in the death of infected cells in the mosquitoes, limiting their ability to transmit disease. In addition, investigators are working on tools to enhance the application of this and other genetic strategies in mosquitoes.

India accounts for 25% of global tuberculosis (TB) incidence. To evaluate variations in practice quality, and identify ways to improve TB management in India, this project, led by Canada's McGill University, will send researchers into clinics posing as a patient with standard TB symptoms. The project builds on earlier work related to angina, asthma and dysentery, which revealed incorrect diagnoses and treatment. India needs a strategy for measuring and improving quality of TB care. We will use “mystery clients” posing as TB patients to evaluate quality.

Asif Mohammed from the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in India will identify miRNA patterns as potential biomarkers as per Receiver Operating Characteristics, to identify quantitative patterns of circulating human miRNAs which can be used as early biomarkers to predict outcome of the anti-TB drug therapy.

The project study proposes the development of nutrient rich genotypes in rice possessing the key nutraceuticals and therapeutic clues through which required nutrients such as iron and zinc for pregnant women and infants of rural households will be supplemented sustainably. Any improved line of rice will be compared with the traditional parents and other popularly eaten white rice varieties for its nutritional content and therapeutic values. The improved lines of rice having nutritive, anti-diabetic and therapeutic characters may be registered.