Target Malaria’s 2024 Highlights 

Posted 29th January 2025 by Professor Austin Burt

At Target Malaria, we continue our mission to develop gene drive mosquitoes that would be complementary to vaccines, bed nets, insecticides and the vital tools that have helped countries become malaria-free and reduce the number of cases and deaths. We hope our technology will be able to become a key tool in the future towards malaria elimination in Africa.  

I am pleased to share with our stakeholders some of the key moments of 2024 from our consortium, across Africa, Europe and North America.  

World Malaria Report 2024 

The World Malaria Report emphasized again the need to “develop and prepare for the rapid introduction of new transformational tools” to eliminate malaria in Africa. With 263 million cases and 597,000 deaths reported in 2023, the task ahead of us is considerable. Africa carries the burden of malaria and children under five and pregnant women are the main victims. But innovation is starting to deliver important breakthroughs. This year, we witnessed the rollout in Africa of RTS,S and R21 malaria vaccines, an intervention that will protect millions of African children in high-burden countries. Cape Verde and Egypt were officially certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization, demonstrating that an Africa free of malaria is possible. 

Technology development 

Our non gene drive genetically modified male bias strain is now present in both our Arthropod Containment Level 2 insectaries in Burkina Faso and Uganda. The IRSS team in Burkina Faso have submitted regulatory dossiers requesting permission to release the male bias. 

High visibility broadcast 

Professor Abdoulaye Diabaté, Principal Investigator for Target Malaria Burkina Faso, was a wonderful ambassador for our Project being featured in two high profile venues: TED and Netflix, and numerous interviews and articles. Diabaté gave a TED Talk on “How to end malaria once and for all” at the TED annual conference, one of the most influential events relating to Technology and Entertainment. The video has been seen by over 445,000 people so far.  

Diabaté and his team at the Institute of Research for Health Sciences were also featured in the Netflix series “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates”. In Episode 5 “How to outsmart disease?”, Diabaté had a conversation with Bill Gates about their joint mission to end malaria in their lifetimes. Stakeholders and scientists in Burkina Faso are also featured.

Krystal Birungi (Target Malaria Uganda/UVRI) and Azra Ghani (Target Malaria UK/Imperial College London) contributed to the Zero Malaria Experience, an immersion in malaria data hosted by British football player David Beckham on malaria in the world since the 1960s.  

Publications 

As a research consortium with a commitment to the global pledge to share our findings widely, it is important for our teams to publish regularly. We published 10 scientific papers in 2024, increasing our tally to 239 publications since 2005 when I first started this project. While I cannot highlight all ten, I wish to share with you the following three that are of particular interest for a broader audience:  

  • Considerations for first field trials of low-threshold gene drive for malaria vector control. As our programme of research and development steadily progresses in the lab, we have also been thinking about how best to test our gene drive technology in field trials. Over the last two years, we were fortunate to harness the support of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) to help us address this question. They convened a collaborative group that included the leading three developers of self-sustaining, or “low-threshold,” gene drive for malaria vector control: Target Malaria, Transmission Zero, and University of California Malaria Initiative. The outputs from that group have now been crystalised into this paper published in Malaria Journal  
  • The potential of gene drives in malaria vector species to control malaria in African environments. Our modelers at Imperial College London and at the University of Oxford have developed a new mathematical modelling study investigating the potential epidemiological impacts of gene drive releases in West Africa. One of the main findings was that gene drives need to be released in multiple species of malaria transmitting mosquito to strongly reduce clinical malaria cases. They also demonstrated the potential of gene drives to substantially boost malaria control when used in combination with new bed net products and vaccines, with at least 60% more clinical cases averted when gene drives were added. The paper has been published in Nature Communications. 

Video game 

We launched “Target Malaria: The Game” an educational and serious video game invented by Louise Marston, Senior Lab Technician at Imperial College London and one of Target Malaria’s expert micro-injectors. The game is available for free for download in French and English.  

Awards 

The project won the Certificate of Excellence at the Sabre Awards Africa 2024 in the Not-for-profit category for “Disruptive science communications tools for community engagement in Africa”.  

Country updates  

  • Burkina Faso: Target Malaria Burkina Faso at the Research Institute of Health Sciences (IRSS) has been focusing this year on finalizing studies on the non gene drive genetically modified male bias strain that was imported in 2023. The team was honoured to have a ministerial visit from Professor Adjima Thiombiano, Minister of Research at the Institute of Research for Health Sciences, as well as from the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. The Burkina Faso team also shared Voices from the Field in French and English – which have reached over 47,000 views! Make sure to catch them on our YouTube channel.  
  • Ghana: Target Malaria Ghana at the University of Ghana wrapped up the ecological studies project and will be publishing the results once fully analysed. These studies aimed at analyzing what would be the environmental impact if the number of Anopheles gambiae was significantly reduced in the ecosystem following a release of gene drive mosquitoes. 
  • Italy: Target Malaria Italy team at PoloGGB has been conducting safety and efficacy studies on a strain of a gene drive mosquito that is currently our lead candidate to potentially be used for experimental field releases in the future.  
  • Uganda: Target Malaria Uganda at the Uganda Virus Research Institute imported its first strain of genetically modified mosquito, the same as in Burkina, the “male bias”. The team just finalized the contained use studies at the UVRI insectary and will be publishing the results.  
  • United Kingdom: Target Malaria UK team at Imperial College London has continued to develop novel approaches for genetic control of the malaria mosquitoes, including optimizing new low-threshold gene drives and developing proof-of-principle for self-limiting genetic biocontrol. 
  • United States: Target Malaria US at the Centers for Disease Control has continued to perform safety studies including assays for vector competence.  

Media 

Target Malaria was featured in over 200 articles, the highlights of our media coverage are  available in our virtual newsroom. Here are the top-tier media outlets that wrote or spoke about us this year:

  • In Africa: CNBC Africa, Nature Africa, The Conversation Africa, Semaphor Africa, Africa.com 
  • In Uganda: New Vision, the Monitor, Uganda Broadcast Corporation 
  • In Burkina Faso: Sidwaya, LeFaso.net, RTB 
  • In Ghana: Ghana News Agency, News Ghana 
  • Rest of the world: El Pais, New York Times, Financial Times, the Guardian, National Geographic, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, San Lian Lifeweek 
  • In trade media: Phys.org, Pharma News, La Gazette du laboratoire 

Social media 

In addition to our presence on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn; we launched the Target Malaria Global and Burkina Faso Facebook pages. Our social media highlights included:  

  • Gaining over 2,000 followers on LinkedIn to reach a total of 5,500 followers and over 800 on X to reach a total of 4,300 (organic growth). 

Events 

  • Target Malaria experts from across the consortium joined a delegation coordinated by the Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Cali, Colombia in October 2024. 
  • Target Malaria Uganda participated in a Scientific Colloquium organised by the Ministry of Health for World Malaria Day and exhibition on World Mosquito Day. 
  • Target Malaria Burkina Faso participated in multiple science symposium events: PharmaExpo, Innovation week through the center of excellence in biotechnological innovation for the elimination of vector-borne diseases, 5th International Symposium on Science and Technology in  Bobo-Dioulasso, the 3rd edition of the Journées Scientifiques de l’Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé à Koudougou (JSI 2024), International Exhibition for Healthcare Professionals and the Integration of Care (SISPIS) 

Webinars 

  • GeneConvene hosted a presentation of the gene drive mosquito field trial paper in which Dr. John C. Connolly was a speaker.  
  • Target Malaria’s Young Scientists Network invited an African malaria advocate on the role of the youth in malaria advocacy.  

In an effort to share our progress as broadly as possible, we publish blogs and news posts every week. This year we published 71 of them. We also send a quarterly email newsletter , which we also publish on LinkedIn, where we include all our main updates. We hope you will continue to enjoy reading about the development of our project.  

2025 will see the 8th Global Fund Replenishment a key moment of malaria advocacy and fundraising. Target Malaria will join its malaria partners worldwide to make sure that the funding targets are met.  

Wishing you the best for 2025 

Professor Austin Burt

Principal Investigator, Imperial College London
Target Malaria UK