STOCKHOLM  (AFP) – Cages meshed over with women’s tights and crawling with mosquitoes are stashed in a Swedish laboratory. Every day, researchers feed them beetroot juice laced with deadly toxins, part of a grand plan designed to fight malaria.

With hopes of field trials delayed repeatedly by the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers in Sweden still believe they have found the secret to a new environmentally friendly way of killing off the Anopheles species of mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

So hopeful are they, they founded a company with a view to turning their discovery into a commercially viable alternative to the pesticides currently used to kill mosquitoes, but which can also harm humans and the environment.

Researcher Noushin Emami, 44, jokes that it’s like having a pet, but that unlike a pet, these mosquitoes are tricked into drinking a poisoned chalice.

They are tricked because the liquid is spiked with the very molecule that makes humans infected with malaria so appetising to them.

“If we add this molecule to any other solution, we make that solution very tasty for mosquitoes,” molecular infection biologist at Stockholm University Emami said.

“Like the taste of a fresh baguette or a pizza for a hungry creature… just out of the oven,” she told AFP.

In December, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 241 million cases of malaria in 2020, up from 219 million in 2019, with an estimated 627,000 deaths – 96 per cent of which were in Africa. Children under five accounted for about 80 per cent of those deaths.

Malaria not only sickens people, those who become infected become more attractive to mosquitoes which then transmit the parasite to more and more people.

In 2017, Emami and her fellow researchers discovered this was due to a specific molecule, dubbed HMBPP, released as the parasite that causes malaria, attacks the body’s red
blood cells.

Opening what looks like a giant refrigerator kept to a temperature of 27 degrees Celsius, Emami shows off shelves of water-filled containers full of wriggling larvae, and the improvised mosquito cages, which she and her team feed daily.

By adding to the beetroot juice – in place of human blood – “a trace amount of toxins combined with the molecule, mosquitoes eat it and die”, explained Emami, who is an associate professor at the University of Greenwich in London.

The goal is also to use “harmless, environmentally friendly and easy to get killing-compounds”.

Lech Ignatowicz, who together with Emami co-founded the company Molecular Attraction to commercialise the discovery, said the new method has the potential to drastically change the fight against mosquitoes spreading diseases.

“The most effective way of killing mosquitoes is still using pesticides, but we know that pesticides are not only killing mosquitoes, but also other insects and other forms of life,” Ignatowicz told AFP.

There is also evidence that pesticides are becoming less effective. Nearly 80 countries reported to the WHO that mosquitos exhibited resistance to at least one of the four commonly used insecticides between 2010 and 2019.

Not only is the molecule relatively cheap, Ignatowicz said another benefit is how precisely it can target mosquitoes.

“Even in very dense environments, the jungle or tropical environments with a lot of insects, we can pick the ones we want to get rid of… and leave the rest of the ecosystem alone,” Ignatowicz said.

While the team is focussing on malaria, the method has the potential to be adapted in the fight to curb the spread of other diseases transmitted by insects or even rodents.
The next step is to start testing the method in the field.

Anders Lindstrom, a mosquito researcher at Sweden’s National Veterinary Institute who is not connected to the project, told AFP he was “cautiously optimistic” about the method, but said much work remains to be done.

“The problem is always scaling up. The areas that need to be covered with these types of traps to get an effect are huge,” Lindstrom explained.

Any method also needs to be applied consistently over time, which can be difficult in poor or conflict-hit areas where malaria is common.

“You can have a rather fast effect in reducing populations, but the moment you stop, they come back,” Lindstrom said.

Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO (XINHUA) – On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history.

These statues and busts are carved by Francis as part of his 100-figure sculpture project that he has been working on over the past three years and expects to display in exhibitions in Egypt and abroad later this year.

Among the miniature sculptures are the mummy of Egypt’s ancient King Ramses II lying down in a little coffin and the bust of China’s philosopher Confucius, surrounded by statues and busts of Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, India’s Rabindranath Tagore, German-born physicist Albert Einstein, Austria’s composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso.

“They gather together in one place regardless of their different languages and cultures,” the Egyptian artist and journalist told Xinhua, stressing that it is the theme of his project.

Francis said his choice of Taha Hussein was because he was one of the most influential Egyptian writers in the 20th Century and was referred to as “the Dean of Arabic Literature,” although he became blind in his early childhood.

“He was a figure that defied all difficult conditions and his influence wasn’t restricted to Egypt but extended to the world,” he added.

Francis said the bust of Confucius was one of his lastest works, noting that he visited China in 2017 and was impressed by its culture and architecture.

“He (Confucius) is a Chinese philosopher whose thoughts influenced humanity. His works were translated into different languages across the world. I chose him as a symbol of Chinese culture, thought and philosophy,” Francis told Xinhua.

Francis started learning to paint since childhood, and was inspired by the ancient Egyptian artistic antiquities in the monument-rich province of Luxor, where he was born and grew up.

Three years ago, his interest turned to sculpture. Now he uses polymer clay as the main material of his sculptures, whose heights vary between eight and 18cm, shaping them with simple sculpting tools such as a toothpick and a needle, and using a magnifying glass to be able to take care of the smallest details.

Some of the miniature statues are sculptured in a caricature-based style with bigger heads, while the focus of some busts is on the details of the facial features such as those of Confucius and Tagore, according to the artist.

Although the first year under the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult for the world, Francis took the global lockdown that followed as a “chance” to improve his sculpturing skills and managed to finish 60 miniature sculptures in 2020.

“I believe that art is a message of peace that unites all human beings despite their different cultures and languages,” the artist told Xinhua.