Flaminia Catteruccia wants to stop malaria from killing people. More than ten million people have died from malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade. Over ninety percent of these deaths are children who are five or younger.
Current control in Africa involves either mosquito nets to shield people as they sleep or insecticide sprays. The methods are effective but not enough to eradicate the disease altogether. Mosquitoes are becoming immune to the insecticides or adapting by biting people in areas where insecticide will not be sprayed.
https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/solve-for-x-flaminia-catteruccia-on-malaria-eradication
When a female mosquito bites a person infected with the disease and then bites another person the disease is spread. Only ten to twenty of the thousands species of mosquitoes transmit malaria. Female mosquitoes have sex only once in their lifetime. The idea is to generate millions of sterile male mosquitoes that will mate with the females, ending production of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.
Male mosquitoes don't bite or transmit disease and are only interested in finding females for mating purposes. In the 1970s when this idea was first developed only chemo sterilants or gamma radiation were available for sterilization. These processes proved to be too disruptive to the male mosquitoes and would not allow them to mate.
Using modern techniques Flaminia has generated male mosquitoes that have no sperm. When observed a pairing that normally produces hundreds of eggs now produces zero eggs. However, the lab process is slow and inefficient.
https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/solve-for-x-flaminia-catteruccia-on-malaria-eradication
To scale up the process Catteruccia is investigating an automated system. If inhibitors could be injected into the female mosquitoes then every egg would be unable to transmit malaria.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110808/images/news466-i1.0.jpg
