When he was five years old, Abdoulaye Diabate faced a life-threatening bout of malaria, he survived the mosquito-borne disease, but his cousins ages three and four didn’t get the same chance.
Meanwhile, Diabate is heading medical entomology and parasitology at Burkina Faso’s Research Institute in Health Sciences. He is developing the technique described as “gene drive technology” which could potentially wipe out malaria by editing mosquito DNA
All the Western African nation’s 22 million inhabitants, especially children, are at the risk of malaria, according to the World Health Organization. The disease is a leading cause of death in Burkina Faso.
The most recent data from WHO regional officer for Africa showed that the disease has killed nearly 19,000 people in Diabate’s country in 2021.
For many years, the measures to prevent malaria including use of insecticide-treated bed nets have helped to reduce the transmission and deaths results from the disease; nevertheless, WHO said in April 2023 that malaria deaths remained unacceptably high, and cases had continued to increase since 2015.
According to last published data by WHO, Malaria have killed an estimated 619,000 people globally in 2021. WHO added that around 96% of those deaths happened in Africa, 80% of casualties on the continent were among children under the age of 5.
Diabate believes that innovating malaria control tools was the only way to conquer the disease.
“Although bed nets are doing a fantastic job… we now have widespread insecticide resistance in the different species of mosquitoes, specifically those that are transmitting malaria.” He said.
“This makes it difficult to defeat malaria with these conventional tools. This is why it is extremely important to innovate and get new tools that can complement the existing ones. (Otherwise) in no way would we able to defeat malaria.”
Diabate’s project to wipe out malaria
Malaria is a disease transmitted through the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes. Male mosquitoes do not bite hence are unable to transmit malaria.
Diabate describes his vector control tool for malaria as “gene drive technology” and this could be the “game-changer” when rolled out.
Diabate said the female mosquito population would be depleted and malaria transmission halted with gene drive, the female mosquito species that transmit the disease may be prevented from producing new female offspring through the release of gene-edited males that are made sterile into the environment.
“When the (gene-edited) mosquitoes are released in the field … they will spread across the entire mosquito population and cut malaria transmission right away,” he said, adding that gene drive was a more sustainable and budget-friendly malaria control intervention.
“The genetically modified mosquitoes are the ones to do the job for you … unlike the other (malaria control) interventions where humans run from place to place to deliver.
“The good thing about this technology that we are developing is that if it works as expected, it’s not only going to be cost-effective, but it will also be sustainable and can be deployed in remote and difficult-to-access areas in Africa. We believe that once the technology is ready and we release it and it works as expected, it should be able to be the game-changer.”
However, it may take a few more years to roll out genre drive technology in Africa, Diabate said.
This is not the first project targeting mosquitoes DNA. In 2013, a US biotech company,Oxitec, developed gene-modified mosquitoes that pass on a deadly gene to female species of the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits yellow fever, as well as the dengue and Zika viruses. As the results, th offspring of the gene-modified female mosquitoes die in the larval stage.
Another project like this was carried out in 2016 by the International Atomic Energy Agency, launched an X-ray powered technique to sterilize male mosquitoes in Latin America and the Caribbean, aimed at reducing the reproduction of female offspring that transmit Zika.
Diabate’s gene drive technology has been welcomed by Health authorities outside Burkina Faso but questions remain about its impact on the environment when fully released.
“Malaria has affected every aspect of my personal life: from nearly dying of the disease as a toddler to taking care of my loved ones every time they get sick. I have therefore dedicate my life to fighting this disease that stifles the development of Africa and breaks the future of millions of African lives,” he said.
The Burkina Faso-born scientist and professor was awarded the 2023 falling walls prize for science and Innovation Management for his research.
Diabate was also named in September as the only African among 10 global winners of the prestigious award for this year and was also recognized by the Falling Walls Foundation for “contributing some of the world’s most advanced work on genetic solutions to malaria.”