Keywords: Funding

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

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Malaria No More,  2025-10-29 17:39:23.
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 around for so long that, for many people, it can seem like it’s no longer a big deal. It’s incredible how it can be glossed over that we’re losing over half a million people a year to a disease that we’ve been fighting for decades. You don’t often get recognized for work in this field, so it means a lot to have something I’m working towards be acknowledged. I was also delighted that this brought such a large platform to the fight against malaria. It has helped draw more attention to what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and the potential it holds to defeat the disease. This year’s Goalkeepers event and being named a champion, is something I’m incredibly grateful for – not just for myself, but for the impact that it can have for malaria.

Innovation under pressure: bold ideas for a changing malaria landscape

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Epstein, A., Tangena, JA.,  BMC Glob. Public Health,  3. 2025-10-27 10:36:07.
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 moving from trials into wider use [4, 5]. On the treatment front, the pipeline now includes long-lasting antimalarials [6], triple combination therapies (TACTs) [7], and single-dose drugs like tafenoquine [8]. Novel approaches such as ivermectin, recently shown to reduce malaria incidence when deployed in mass drug administration campaigns, are also gaining traction [9]. Looking further ahead, early breakthroughs in gene drive in mosquitoes to bias inheritance of a specific genetic trait (like sterility or resistance to malaria) is passed on to offspring, and monoclonal antibodies, which point to bold new frontiers [10, 11]. Together, these advances represent the most significant broadening of the malaria toolkit in decades. But innovation alone will not be enough. The momentum is colliding with deep structural challenges. Funding cuts threaten to derail the rollout of new tools. Resistance is mounting: mosquitoes have developed resistance to most insecticides used for vector control, and parasites are showing reduced sensitivity to artemisinin and even lumefantrine, a key partner drug to control artemisinin resistance, in East Africa [12]. Climate change is redrawing the risk map by shifting mosquito habitats. Health systems remain fragile, weakened by COVID-19, extreme weather, and political unrest. Even when technologies are available, their potential can be weakened by regulatory delays, fragmented governance, or inequities in access and limited community trust. The path forward requires more than breakthroughs in science. Sustained progress will depend equally on the strength of delivery systems, stable financing, and governance that can translate innovation into equitable impact.

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

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Kai Kupferschmidt,  Science,  2025-09-03 09:35:57.
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 kind in Africa, was part of a project supported by the Gates Foundation that aims to rid the world of malaria using a so-called gene drive, a controversial technique to help desirable genes spread through a population fast. But a week later, that dream suffered a major setback. On 18 August, judicial police showed up at the Research Institute in Health Sciences (IRSS) in Bobo-Dioulasso, a key partner in Target Malaria, to stage what scientists described as a “brutal, humiliating” raid. According to minutes of a 26 August meeting between researchers and the country’s science minister, IRSS scientists were “treated like criminals, with their offices and laboratories sealed and marked as crime scenes.” The minutes noted that “everyone was searched, including their vehicles, on the grounds that researchers might be carrying mosquitoes in their pockets.” Four days later, the government suspended all of Target Malaria’s activities in Burkina Faso indefinitely. IRSS scientists killed the mosquitoes still living in their insectary, and the government sent a team to spray insecticides in Souroukoudingan to kill the mosquitoes released there.