Gene Drive in the News

A curated collection of articles from the popular press

New Gene Drive Stops the Spread of Malaria—Without Killing Any Mosquitoes

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Shelly Fan,  SingularityHub,  2025.
Mosquitoes are an uncomfortable, itchy nuisance. But for people in sub-Saharan Africa, a bite could mean death. The pests are living incubators for the parasite that causes malaria. Roughly 600,000 people are killed by the disease each year, with most being children under five ...

Spot the males: New gene-editing method could transform mosquito control

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Robert Egan,  Phys.org,  2025.
Researchers have developed a new "color-coded" genetic method that makes it easy to distinguish male and female mosquitoes. This innovation can help solve a major bottleneck in mosquito control strategies that rely on releasing only sterile males. The approach uses gene editing ...

Genetic trick to make mosquitoes malaria resistant passes key test

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Michael Le Page,  New Scientist,  2025.
A genetic technology known as a gene drive could help prevent malaria by spreading genes in wild mosquitoes that stop them transmitting the parasite. Tests in a lab in Tanzania have now confirmed that one potential gene drive should achieve this if it were released in the ...

This scientist is breeding billions of mosquitoes to fight disease in Brazil

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Mariana Lenharo,  Nature,  2025.
nside a massive factory in the industrial district of Curitiba, Brazil, millions of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are breeding in a climate-controlled room filled with mesh cages. Every week, the facility produces more than 80 million mosquito eggs. At the heart of this effort is ...

Controversial genetically modified mosquito release paused after backlash in Qld

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Brandon Long,  Australian Broadcasting Corporation,  2025.
A plan to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in Queensland has been paused, with the organisation behind the idea withdrawing its licence application. Oxitec Australia — a partnership between Australia's CSIRO and US biotech firm Oxitec Ltd — aimed to sell its ...

UCMI partners with Equatorial Guinea to advance the fight against malaria

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Ana Kormos,  Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  2025.
The University of California Malaria Initiative (UCMI) announced a new partnership with the Government of Equatorial Guinea on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which took place in New York City in September. The partnership will support the ...

Malaria Know More: Behind the Science of Gene Drive with Krystal Birungi

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Malaria No More,  2025.
Congratulations on being named a 2025 Goalkeepers Champion by the Gates Foundation! What does this acknowledgement mean to you personally and professionally as an advocate for malaria elimination? BIRUNGI: It was pretty exciting and also very validating. Malaria has been ...

Innovation under pressure: bold ideas for a changing malaria landscape

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Epstein, A., Tangena, JA.,  BMC Glob. Public Health,  3. 2025.
Innovation has never been more urgent. Encouragingly, the malaria research community is responding. Next-generation insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) [1], new indoor residual sprays (IRS) [2], and spatial emanators are reaching communities [3]. Vaccines such as R21 and RTS,S are ...

Reactions as IUCN Congress votes to adopt Policy on Synthetic Biology, rejects genetic engineering moratorium

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EnvironNews Nigeria,  2025.
Following the vote at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, members have rejected a moratorium on genetic engineering of wild species (Motion 133) and adopted the IUCN Policy on Synthetic Biology (Motion 087), a move observers see as a signal of support for a science-based, ...

Cattle Q&A with Brinda Dass, GeneConvene Global Collaborative

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Tyrell Marchant,  Progressive Cattle,  2025.
What factors have led to the northward spread of New World screwworm (NWS) over the past year after so many decades of successful eradication in Mexico and the U.S.? DASS: The northward spread of NWS after decades of eradication reflects a convergence of biological, ...

Should genetically modified wildlife be banned? Scientists weigh the risks

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Mariana Lenharo,  Nature,  2025.
The global conservation community is debating whether to ban the release of genetically modified organisms into the wild. Dozens of non-governmental organizations have called for a moratorium on field applications of synthetic biology — a technology being studied as a tool to ...

UC Malaria Initiative Expands Activities to Equatorial Guinea

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Andy Fell,  UC Davis,  2025.
The University of California Malaria Initiative, which includes researchers at UC Davis, will partner in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea’s Vision 2030 strategy to eliminate malaria from the Central African country. The plan, which also includes Oxford University, Tsinghua ...

Biotechnology Is a Powerful Tool for Conservation

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Emma Kovak,  The Ecomodernist,  2025.
What do the American Chestnut tree, the black rat, and the northern white rhinoceros have in common? They are all prime targets for conservation through biotechnology. Genetic engineering could give American chestnut trees disease resistance and restore the keystone species to ...

From fear to leadership: Africa must embrace innovation instead of blocking it

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Patricia Nanteza,  The Observer,  2025.
In Burkina Faso, the Target Malaria project, a global research consortium aiming to use genetically modified mosquitoes to combat malaria, has faced a major setback. On August 18, 2025, judicial police raided the Research Institute in Health Sciences (IRSS), a key partner in the ...

Genetically engineered mice could take the bite out of Lyme disease on Nantucket, scientists say

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Jon LaPook, Denise Schrier Cetta, Aliza Chasan, Katie Brennan,  CBS News,  2025.
Over the past 40 years, Dr. Timothy Lepore has been the emergency room head, sole surgeon and medical examiner on Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Today he runs the only private practice, where he treats dozens of patients with Lyme disease each year. About ...

How billions of hacked mosquitoes and a vaccine could beat the deadly dengue virus

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Lucila Pinto,  Nature,  645:578-580. 2025.
Last month, a parade of vehicles wound its way through three cities in Brazil, releasing clouds of mosquitoes into the air. The insects all carry a secret weapon — a bacterium called Wolbachia that lowers the odds that the mosquitoes can transmit the dreaded dengue virus to ...

Fruit fly tests in Greece target invasive species threat

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Vassilis Kyriakoulis,  Phys.org,  2025.
In a small persimmon orchard in northern Greece, scientists carefully open paper bags to release thousands of flies, in an experiment aimed at blunting the destructive impact of invasive new species. The insects are sterile male Mediterranean fruit flies (Ceratitis capitata), a ...

Mosquito gene drive cancellation disrupts Africa’s malaria research

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Esther Nakkazi,  Nature Africa,  2025.
The abrupt suspension of an anti-malarial gene drive project in Burkina Faso has disrupted plans by scientists in Uganda working on their own modified mosquitoes. The Target Malaria project was put on hold by Burkina Faso’s government in August. Facilities holding genetically ...

After ‘humiliating’ raid, Burkina Faso halts ‘gene drive’ project to fight malaria

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Kai Kupferschmidt,  Science,  2025.
On 11 August, the international nonprofit Target Malaria celebrated a milestone: In the village of Souroukoudingan, Burkina Faso, its researchers released about 16,000 male mosquitoes genetically modified to produce almost exclusively male offspring. The release, the first of its ...

This is the world’s largest ‘mosquito factory’: its goal is to stop dengue

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Mariana Lenharo,  Nature,  2025.
When biologist Antonio Brandão tells people that he works at a mosquito factory, they are often baffled. Why would you make more mosquitoes?, he recalls people asking. “We have enough of them.” But once he explains that the laboratory-raised insects can help to stop the ...

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