Mosquitoes are notorious for their ability to spread debilitating viral diseases, such as Japanese Encephalitis. These viruses are capable of infecting and replicating in both the salivary glands of mosquitoes and in the blood of susceptible hosts, such as humans and livestock.
Despite mosquitoes being public enemy number one, we can coax them into allies for the production of vaccines. Using insect cell culture technology, we can grow mosquito cells in the lab and use these cells to mass produce vaccines.
Postdoctoral researcher Dr Henry de Malmanche is harnessing this mosquito cell culture technology to develop industrially-compatible methods for the scalable manufacturing of next generation Japanese Encephalitis vaccines.