Word: dinglasan
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...into the body, where the immune system spots it and cranks out antibodies against it. Then, if a wild strain of the pathogen comes along later - one that has the power to sicken or kill - the body is ready for it. The new approach is different. Developed by Rhoel Dinglasan, an entomologist and biologist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, it would instead work within the mosquito gut. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
...Dinglasan has found an antigen, called AnAPN1, that causes humans to create antibodies that prevent transmission of malaria by mosquitoes. Get enough of these antibodies into mosquitoes, and you lock the disease up there and prevent it from infecting us. Sounds good, but how do you implement such a strategy? You can hardly vaccinate the mosquitoes themselves. Instead, you put the AnAPN1 into their food source: us. A mosquito that bites an inoculated person would pick up the antibodies and then be sidelined from the malaria-transmission game...
...make a TBV more more attractive, then, epidemiologists do not plan to administer it by itself. Rather, it would be given along with a traditional immunity-conferring vaccine. "Not a single person thinks that you should give a transmission-blocking vaccine alone," says Dinglasan. "You'd give it in combination." (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
...Dinglasan's TBV, though, that's really sparking the excitement in the field. One reason is its robustness. The vaccine so far works against the major types of malaria and all species of mosquitoes tested - critical if the disease is going to be not just controlled but snuffed out entirely. "We're working towards eventual eradication," explains Dr. Ashley Birkett, director of preclinical research and development at PATH MVI. "It requires a long-term vision, and we really think a vaccine that can block transmission from one person to another is going to be a critical tool."(See TIME...
...Dinglasan - who comes from the Philippines, where some islands are still affected by malaria - sees things in a more basic way. Malaria, he says, is "a dark cloud. We're talking about the deaths of small children. They can't get past the age of 5. I don't know if you can measure the full impact of that." You can't. Nor can you measure the sense of global relief when that kind of suffering is over for good...
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