Mosquitoes are a vector agent that carries mosquito-borne disease, transmitting viruses and parasites from person to person without catching the disease themselves. Mosquitoes carrying these viruses stay healthy while carrying them because their immune system recognizes them as bad and "chops off" the virus's genetic coding, rendering it harmless. Infection of humans occurs when a mosquito bites someone while its immune system is still in the process of destroying the virus's harmful coding. When a mosquito bites, she also injects saliva and anti-coagulants into the blood which may also contain disease-causing viruses or other parasites. This cycle can be interrupted by killing the mosquitoes, isolating infected people from all mosquitoes while they are infectious or vaccinating the exposed population.
With that being said, researchers at Jichi Medical University plan on creating a mosquito that can deliver protective vaccines through its saliva. How will they do this? you may ask. Well, it's simple...they are going to design a mosquito that can secrete a malaria vaccine protein when it bites a human host.
Development of such a 'flying syringe' could be used to deliver vaccines against a range of infectious diseases, not just Malaria. Wouldn't you agree? Anyways, I think that this is the beginning of a new wave of ideas in the field of medical research. If this 'flying syringe' project actually works, I look forward to what projects are to follow from Jichi Medical University. But for the time being, I think they have a winner w/ this idea. What do you think?
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