An international team of collaborators, aiming to eliminate dengue fever worldwide, has taken a major step forward with the opening of a state of the art Mosquito Research Facility (MRF) in Cairns.
Professor Scott O’Neill, Head of The University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences, is leading the project.
The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, through the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, together with James Cook University (JCU) has invested $2 million in the new facility.
Experiments will be conducted over the next 18 months to test the use of Wolbachia bacteria to control the spread of dengue. Wolbachia shortens the lives of mosquitoes, which must live at least 12 days in order to pass Dengue on to humans.
Professor O’Neill has been working on the project for the past three years.
Earlier this year a UQ team in Professor O’Neill’s laboratory published a paper in the prestigious international journal Science, proving the effectiveness of a way of limiting the lifespan of the dengue mosquito Aedes aegypti with the Wolbachia bacterium.
“Following our success in the lab we are now taking our research to the next stage, into a more naturally occurring but still controlled and contained environment,” Professor O’Neill said.
“Over the next year, our team will be able to evaluate the ability of Wolbachia to invade Aedes aegypti populations in this enclosed facility, as well as Wolbachia’s potential to eliminate dengue by shortening the mosquitoes’ lives and rendering them unable to transmit the virus.”
The newly constructed MRF was opened by Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley AO, Governor of Queensland, on 3 June 2009.
The Facility comprises a high-level containment laboratory and two fully enclosed, outdoor ‘green-house’ style laboratories which have been designed and built to replicate the preferred Australian breeding ground of the mosquito – that is the typical Cairns residential backyard including the underside of a Queenslander-style house.
The dengue research and the Mosquito Research Facility at JCU are overseen by Dr Scott Ritchie, who has worked extensively with other Queensland Health experts in monitoring and controlling dengue outbreaks in far north Queensland, for more than a decade.
“We are all very excited about this project,” Dr Ritchie said. “If successful this research will allow us to ‘Dengue-proof’ Cairns and, we hope, to never again experience an outbreak of the virus like we have seen this year.”
UQ media contact: Fiona Kennedy 07 3365 1384
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