Product/Service Development

Charles Chung and team from UbIQ World in the U.S. will engineer the surface of male condoms using nanofabrication technology to mimic human skin, thereby enhancing sensation and encouraging use. Current condom materials such as latex are smooth, in contrast to human skin, which is highly textured. They will measure surface properties of the skin, including roughness and hydrophobicity, and use them to engineer a nanotexturized prototype condom that will be evaluated in a double blind study.

Immo Hansen of New Mexico State University in the U.S. will develop an artificial protein-based meal for rearing mosquitoes to replace currently used vertebrate blood, which has extensive region-specific regulatory requirements. Large numbers of mosquitoes are required for several mosquito control strategies to reduce the incidence of vector borne diseases such as malaria. They have developed the so-called SkitoSnack consisting of serum albumin and another protein that together support egg development in female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

Sam Telford III of Tufts University in the U.S. will develop a dried, vacuum-packed blood-based meal for mass rearing mosquitoes to support disease control efforts. Feeding mosquitoes with fresh blood is problematic due to complex material requirements and varying quality. They will first optimize the composition of sugar- supplemented blood for supporting healthy reproduction of Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes. Then they will test its stability after different methods of freeze-drying and packaging under varying storage and handling conditions.

Stephen Dobson of the University of Kentucky in the U.S. will adapt their lyophilized mosquito feed formulation to support growth of different disease-relevant mosquito species for control efforts. They will test their lyophilized formulation, which can be stored long term, on other Anopheles species and on Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the intracellular bacterium Wolbachia, which are being used as a dengue fever control strategy. They will also test three different delivery methods to see if they can reduce associated costs by simplifying delivery.

Henrique Silveira of the Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT) in Portugal and colleagues have identified a peptide in human blood that promotes female mosquito reproduction. They will test whether it can be added to artificial diets to improve mosquito breeding in the laboratory for studying vector-borne diseases like malaria. The human peptide activates a so-called G protein-coupled receptor in the mosquito, which somehow triggers reproduction.

Johanna Ohm of Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. will produce an insect-based diet for breeding adult malaria-transmitting Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes in the laboratory. Laboratory mosquitoes are most effectively bred for research using mammalian blood meals, which has numerous limitations including higher costs and requiring human volunteers with stringent regulations. It is known that some mosquitoes can produce viable eggs after feeding on soft-bodied insect larvae such as lepidopteran larvae.

Carina King of the Institute for Global Health in the United Kingdom will use bioelectric impedance vector analysis (BIVA) to measure nutritional status in children with pneumonia in Malawi in order to improve treatment. Malnutrition is strongly associated with poor prognosis in pneumonia but is difficult to accurately assess. BIVA measures bioelectric properties to predict physiological parameters such as hydration and body mass of specific body regions.

Alessio Fasano of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will isolate bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) that specifically kill pathogenic Escherichia coli and Shigella bacteria, which cause environmental enteropathy and other potentially deadly childhood diseases. They will perform a high-throughput screen using a diverse phage library to isolate phage that specifically target the type-III secretion system expressed by enteric pathogens like E. coli.

Kevin Esvelt of President and Fellows of Harvard College in the U.S. will use CRISPR technology to make protective healthy bacteria resistant to phage so they can outcompete pathogenic bacteria that cause childhood diarrhea and stunting. He will develop a method to make the protective Nissle 1917 strain of E. coli resistant to a range of phage, and use it to replace native E. coli strains in the guts of young mice as a model for human infants. This approach will provide long-term protection against pathogenic bacterial infections at low cost.

Koen Dechering of TropIQ in The Netherlands will produce an artificial meal for breeding blood-feeding mosquitoes more easily and effectively in the lab. They will develop a high-throughput screening approach using molecular barcodes carried by endosymbiont bacteria that each tag an individual meal consumed by a live mosquito. The barcodes can then be used to identify those meals that best promote egg laying and longevity from a large pool of test foods.