Enrichment of sporozoites from whole mosquitos

Abstract

A child dies from malaria every minute, with more than 240 million cases each year globally. Although the first malaria vaccine was licensed in 2022, it shows only modest efficacy and waning protection over 12 months. The world therefore needs an effective, long-lasting malaria vaccine. To date the best protection gained against malaria challenge has come from immunization with attenuated (radiation treated) whole parasites, the sporozoite form normally injected by a biting mosquito. Isolating sporozoites from mosquitoes is a painstaking process that has only been possible via manual dissection. Scalable production of a whole-parasite vaccine therefore remains challenging and would be greatly facilitated by a dissection-independent isolation method. Here we have developed just such a method using homogenization, filtration and FFE purification of sporozoites from whole mosquitoes.