Research funded by FCT leads to Studentship from the Gates Foundation

The Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT) is one of the winners Call Studentships Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's most recent Call for Grand Challenges Exploration Studentships. Coordinated by Henrique Silveira, and in collaboration with the Center for Marine Sciences (CCMAR), the teams propose to use the approximately €90,000 in funding to develop, for the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, which transmits malaria, an alternative meal to the conventional blood meal. The project will make the creation of these mosquitoes in the laboratory, for disease control or research purposes, less dependent on the availability of human or animal blood, and therefore more effective and safer.

The Anopheles mosquito is a vector for the transmission of malaria, as it carries the parasite that causes the disease, Plasmodium , from one person (or animal) to another. In a bite, the parasite passes in the blood that is sucked from the infected person to the female Anopheles . In the mosquito, the parasite grows and multiplies, accumulating in the salivary glands. In the next bite, the parasites are injected with the mosquito's saliva into a new host, and a new infection begins.

Female Anopheles need blood meals (obtained through bites) to produce eggs and ensure reproduction. In a project funded by FCT and coordinated by João Cardoso, from CCMAR, researchers identified a peptide (small protein) in human blood that stimulates mosquito reproduction. They now propose testing this factor in an artificial meal, with the aim of producing an effective blood meal substitute.

The peptide that the researchers identified binds to so-called G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). It is known that in humans (and other vertebrates), peptides and their receptors participate in several physiological processes. João Cardoso has already shown that the receptors are also present in invertebrates, namely in the Anopheles mosquito, and that they are activated by peptides that circulate in human blood. One of the effects of its activation is to stimulate mosquito reproduction. THE Studentship from the Gates Foundation will allow teams to study the mechanism underlying this process. If they are successful, they will then be able to apply for new funding from the Gates Foundation – worth $1 million – to move on to the next phase of the research. The ultimate goal is to create an artificial meal that will allow researchers anywhere in the world to farm mosquitoes on a large scale in an effective, safe and ethical way.

The IHMT at Universidade Nova de Lisboa is part of the Global Health and Tropical Medicine unit. This unit and the CCMAR , from the University of Algarve, have FCT funding, and both obtained an Excellent rating in the last FCT evaluation.

The Grand Challenges Exploration program supports researchers around the world on innovative projects aimed at solving global health and development challenges. The project led by Henrique Silveira is one of more than 50 funded in the 15th edition of this program. 

Image: João Cardoso (CCMAR), Henrique Silveira (IHMT), Deborah Power (CCMAR) and Rute Felix (CCMAR). (Credits: CCMAR, University of Algarve)