Malaria is a life-threatening infectious disease that remains seriously dangerous to world health. The challenges posed by the relative success of malaria control and the rise of other infectious diseases transmitted by mosquitoes has been a motor for the development of many innovative tools (e.g. genetically modified mosquitoes), but all of them require large-scale production of mosquitoes in laboratory. However, since female mosquitoes feed on fresh vertebrate blood, the use of high blood quantities constitutes a strong drawback as a result of ethical and financial matters.

New approaches for blood-free meals that are cheap and, of simple and reproducible formulation are thus a priority to accelerate progress toward eradication of malaria and other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes.

Recently we have identified a peptide in human blood that when it binds to a specific receptor in the malaria transmitting mosquito Anophelies triggers the initiation of oogenesis.

This project aims to propose to use this factor to develop effective blood substitutes to significantly improve the success of artificial blood meals and improve sustainability of rearing mosquitoes in captivity a crucial step for research into malaria.