Breakthroughs in disease control have arisen through leaps in understanding and completely new methods of control. For example, the discovery by Sir Ronald Ross in 1897 that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes and the subsequent use of insecticides to control them. Incremental improvements in tackling mosquitoes have involved many smaller innovations, for example the introduction of control flow valves for compression sprayers which enable walls to be sprayed more accurately and consistently with insecticide to maximise the impact on mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

IVCC keeps watch for new ideas in vector control and receives many innovative proposals for development and testing of new products. There is a need to choose those most likely to have a strong impact on disease transmission, short time to deployment, low cost of development, high probability of success and good fit with IVCC’s priorities for vector control. Once these innovations have been selected, IVCC’s role is to test, guide and accelerate them towards adoption and to help maximise the benefits from their use.

An example of this is IVCC’s contribution to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) ‘Grand Challenge for Zika and Future Threats’, which ran from 2017 – 2019. In this case, USAID issued a call for proposals and selected 26 innovations from over 900 submissions. IVCC helped manage 9 of these projects relating to vector control, vector surveillance and Zika virus transmission prevention. IVCC’s role was to support the projects to develop and test their technologies to tackle the principal vector of Zika virus, the mosquito Aedes aegypti. An IVCC Programme Manager, who worked closely with the projects and with USAID’s ‘Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact’, set up a Zika External Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC) with experts drawn from existing IVCC ESACs and supplemented by experts on Aedes aegypti. Meetings of the Zika ESAC were held at approximately 6 monthly intervals, for project updates and ESAC guidance. In addition to this, specialists were appointed to help the projects understand, evaluate and resolve their specific technical, regulatory, production and commercialisation challenges.

The diagram below shows the 12 areas in which IVCC added value to the Zika Grand Challenge projects.

IVCC’s work on Target Product Profiles (TPPs) formed the core of the guidance to the projects to help them to develop products that would combat Zika virus and future threats most effectively and to demonstrate that their innovations would be successful. These profiles define the performance criteria that eventually need to be met and hence gave the research teams a clear vision of what to aim towards.

IVCC also monitored the progress and prospects of each of the projects, regularly evaluating their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT), risks and issues. This helped with determining needs for further funding to address additional aspects of the TPPs and opportunities for development and cross-over of relevant technologies into malaria vector control.

Several projects were successful in achieving their milestones including a spatial repellent product from Sumitomo and a novel automated mosquito trap.

The spatial repellent is impregnated in a small device which can be hung from the ceiling to protect people inside the room from being bitten by mosquitoes. In a project led by QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and involving Emory University and the Autonomous University of Yucatan, two seasons of trials on the mosquito Aedes aegypti in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula demonstrated very good results, suggesting that the product could protect the population from viruses transmitted by this vector (dengue, Zika virus, yellow fever etc.). A significant and important results was that the spatial repellent was effective even in the presence of insecticide resistant mosquitoes. Further work is now funded to investigate cost effectiveness and optimum deployment.

Johns Hopkins University developed a mosquito monitoring trap that incorporates a novel system for recognition, identification and counting of the mosquitoes it catches, as well as automatic transmission of this information via a wireless network. Tests demonstrated a very high level of accuracy in identification, enabling more rapid and accurate monitoring and reduction in labour costs associated with visiting conventional traps and manually identifying their catches.

Innovation is vital to succeeding in the fight against vector-borne diseases and in collaboration with its funders and partners, IVCC is accelerating vector control innovations to save lives.

The IVCC Annual Report 2018-2019 has been published. The report showcases IVCC’s work to facilitate innovative approaches to preventing vector-borne diseases and tackle the growing threat of insecticide resistance. With activities across the globe and spanning research and development and market access, we are accelerating the process from innovation to impact. The report is a reminder of the importance of collaborative working and the progress laid out in it is testament, too, to the commitment of our partners from industry, academia, the public sector and advocacy. We are grateful for the support of all of our funders, who make life-saving vector control possible.

“As I look at the year ahead, I believe we are set fair to maintain IVCC’s momentum towards accomplishing the stretching goals we have set ourselves.”
The Right Honourable Sir Stephen O’Brien KBE
Chair, Board of Trustees, IVCC

For more information or to request a physical copy please provide your full name and postal address to Chris Larkin on christopher.larkin@ivcc.com.

7 November 2019, Hanoi, Vietnam.

IVCC has published the results of three landscape studies it commissioned as part of its 5-year $18.75 million grant from the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security through Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

The reports, which will provide the platform for a series of bespoke product intervention strategies, aim to address the growing threat of vector-borne diseases in the region by providing a comprehensive analysis of the technical, regulatory and market access environment for vector control in the region.

The studies found that while there is a wide range of malaria and other disease transmission ecologies – stretching from South Asia through to the Pacific Islands – several common themes emerged including:

• Outdoor transmission is a key challenge necessitating innovation and access to vector control tools for outdoor protection.
• Despite a lack of insecticide resistance data in many parts of the region, insecticide resistance among dominant Anopheles vectors is widespread in South Asia, and there are indications that pyrethroid resistance is increasing in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), an area also confronting multi-drug-resistant parasites. Limited testing in PNG indicates that pyrethroid susceptibility remains high.
• Most national programmes rely almost exclusively on the mass distribution of long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs), apart from Pakistan and India, which implement wide-scale indoor residual spraying (IRS).
• Aedes-borne diseases are on the rise as Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus populations continue to proliferate with increasing occurrences of dengue outbreaks and often inadequate diagnostic capacity to detect chikungunya and Zika viruses.
• There are some countries with relatively strong Aedes control programmes, but most lack capacity, accessible and effective surveillance and control options.
  Insecticide resistance among Aedes, both pyrethroid adulticides and temephos (organophosphate) larvicide, is very severe in some countries.
• Capacity for emergency response and implementation of International Health Regulations (IHR) for health security varies significantly, with most countries lacking adequate tools and resources.

IVCC is uniquely positioned to address these challenges in collaboration with national programmes and research, implementation and industry partners. Potential solutions fit into IVCC’s integrated vector management (IVM) portfolio of work, because rather than a single product, it is likely to be an integrated package of tools and approaches that, driven by improved, high-quality data and implementation, can sustainably reduce mosquito-borne diseases in the region.

Robin Davies, Head of Australia’s Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security, said: “Vector control interventions have proven to be highly effective in reducing malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Continued innovation in vector control, led by IVCC, will be critical to further driving down the burden of vector-borne disease across our region and globally.”

Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC added; “IVCC has a wealth of experience and expertise in delivering impactful innovative vector control solutions across sub-Saharan Africa. By tapping into this knowledge and expertise we are well placed to transfer our knowledge and learning to deliver a toolbox of relevant vector control solutions fit for the Indo-Pacific region.”

Notes

The reports were launched during a workshop of regulators from across Asia-Pacific focused on best practices and challenges related to the registration and regulation of vector control products. The workshop was convened as part of the Vector Control Platform in Asia Pacific (VCAP), an initiative led by the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) and Unitaid to address policy barriers to vector control.

The technical landscape was undertaken by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Malaria

Elimination Initiative, the regulatory landscape by the consultant John Paul Vasanthan and the Market Access Landscape by FutureBridge.

Conducted between September 2018 and May 2019, the studies comprised of a desk review of 19 countries and in-depth consultations and interviews with governments and partners in the focus countries of Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Vietnam.

Sumitomo Chemical and IVCC have been working for the past 5 years to develop a new active ingredient with a novel mode of action for use in the fight against the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and other debilitating and often fatal diseases.

Extensive laboratory based studies demonstrating the safety and efficacy of this chemistry against insecticide resistant mosquitoes have now been completed. On World Mosquito Day, that commemorates the 1897 discovery by Sir Ronald Ross that female mosquitoes transmit malaria, we are delighted to announce these studies have moved to the next phase.  This includes evaluating the performance of a range of prototype products in both laboratory and semi-field based settings.

Read the full press release in the attached file.