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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INFRAVEC2 (Research Infrastructures for the control of vector-borne diseases)

Teaser

Summary

The challenge of vector-borne disease.
Insect vectors are responsible for major global human suffering due to the diseases they transmit. These include viral infections transmitted by insects, such as chikungunya, dengue, Zika, Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever, and parasitic diseases such as malaria and leishmaniasis. Zika Fever is only decades old as a human disease, while malaria is as old as humanity itself. Insect vector-borne veterinary diseases such as bluetongue and Schmallenberg, caused by viruses, are responsible for large economic losses in European and global animal industries. Bloodfeeding insects can act as a bridge allowing unknown animal pathogens to jump into human hosts, and obscure local diseases can explode into global epidemics after just a few mutations, as apparently happened with chikungunya and Zika viruses. The diseases transmitted by insect vectors can be controlled by attacking the vector, either eliminating it or reducing its ability to transmit the pathogen. Indeed, for many vector-borne diseases, vector control is the only effective means of control. The goal of the Infravec2 project is to support research on insect disease vectors, to understand the biology of disease transmission in order to develop new tools and strategies to control current and future public health threats.

Social importance of insect vector research.
Vector-borne diseases have historically been considered a problem of tropical countries. Within the space of a few decades, vector-transmitted diseases and epidemics have now also become a threat to temperate regions of the world including much of Europe. A contributing factor has been the spread of different invasive mosquito species, particularly the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus, worldwide including into Europe. The increased risk of vector-borne diseases for the European population is a trend that will continue as a consequence of the global movement and expansion of the range of mosquito vectors, and probably other social as well as climatic changes. Thus, vector-borne disease is now a durable and permanent new public health concern in Europe. Just as the vectors and diseases changed to move to new environments, we also must adapt the forms of public health measure implemented to meet the new challenges with vector surveillance, research, and new forms of vector control.

Objectives of Infravec2 for insect vector research and control.
The overall objective of Infravec2 is to integrate key specialized research facilities necessary for European excellence in insect vector biology, open them for access for vector researchers, and develop new vector control measures targeting the greatest threats to human health and animal industries. Working safely with infected insect vectors requires sophisticated and expensive infrastructures, which are not commonly available to many researchers. The lack of access to these unique facilities is currently a significant bottleneck for vector biology research and vector control development. The important vectors range from mosquitoes, considered the worldâ€™s most lethal animal, the less well known but common sandflies, the barely visible Culicoides midges and nymphal ticks, and numerous other groups. The 24 Infravec2 partners, including four commercial companies, run the major European facilities for the study of insect vectors. With EU funding, Infravec2 is able to offer access to these facilities at no cost to qualified researchers in Europe and worldwide. Access to these infrastructures and resources is boosting progress in innovative vector research, building a robust vector research community, and will facilitate the development of new vector control tools.

Work performed

Infravec2 is developing new resources and tools for research on insect vectors. Many current mosquito colonies used for research are old and poorly characterized, and have likely changed in different laboratories. Eight new Infravec2 colonies will be made, initiated in Europe, Africa and South America. Two of these colonies are done, one of them is publicly available and has been requested by researchers, five are in the process of adaptation to the insectary, and the last one will be initiated in September 2018. A genetic fingerprint method is in development as a unique barcode authentication tool to verify colony quality.

Work is in progress to improve the genome sequences for two important but neglected vectors, a European mosquito and a European sandfly. With high-quality genome sequences, the catalog of genes will be available for study, whereas currently the research on these vectors has been greatly limited by the absence of this essential modern research resource.

Infravec2 made progress in a key goal, developing common protocols and operating standards for insect vector facilities. It is important because the current lack of unified experimental standards can lead to errors in understanding the degree of risk posed by vector-pathogen combinations, and consequent inadequate preventative response. The goal is to develop and disseminate the worldâ€™s first common inter-laboratory standards of performance for secure insectary experiments, in which vectors are exposed to a pathogen under controlled conditions to measure the level of infection, and therefore predict their ability to transmit the pathogen.

Final results

The Infravec2 project plan includes a set of methodological and technological innovations reaching beyond the current state of the art. Progress was made during the current period in several target areas. Development of new tools for genetic manipulation of Aedes aegypti made important strides. In the African malaria mosquito, a successful laboratory test showed that populations could be driven to levels too low to maintain malaria transmission. An experimental infection system for sandflies with phlebovirus does not yet exist, and functional research is currently not possible on this European vector-borne disease system. In this period, infections were obtained in the laboratory using this vector and virus, which is an important step towards a new experimental model. This will be novel, will lead to new biological insight, and potential management tools. Progress was also made in development of a new device, the ArboVec-Disk, a handheld high throughput field platform for vector identification and infection testing.

The social impact and implications of insect vectors and vector control was strengthened by progress on an operational citizen science tool, which is a social science strategy to integrate public input into vector surveillance and control by web-based and crowd-sourcing approaches. The wider historical meaning of insect vector control is being investigated in an historic, cultural and anthropological context. Archival research and other historical methods are being used to reconstruct knowledge of historical vector control practices, successes and failures, which may hold clues for current research. Tools are being developed to promote the active involvement of societies for the most effective vector control interventions to protect human and animal health.