Building Regional Capacity to Implement Precision Guided Sterile Insect Technique for Malaria Control in West Africa

Abstract

Malaria control has primarily been achieved via vector control, but current methods are insufficient to achieve elimination. Precision guided sterile insect technique (pgSIT) is a mosquito suppression technique that generates sterile male mosquitoes for mass release. Our previous studies showed that this intervention is expected to be highly cost-effective in a specific malaria-endemic region, but these estimates used only 15-31% capacity for sex sorting, which is the limiting production step and a primary source of the cost. We, therefore, provide a secondary estimate using the predicted maximum sex sorting capability enabled by the use of sex-specific fluorophores, which can be used to evaluate pgSIT feasibility for malaria elimination in any region.  Development of this intervention can potentially interrupt malaria transmission and strengthen the local public health institutions, create manufacturing capacity, provide local jobs, and enable regional health security capabilities that are more resilient to disruption in supply chains and malaria investment.

Keywords: Anopheles gambiae, Sterile Insect Technique, precision guided sterile insect technique, CRISPR, mass rearing, genetic biocontrol