Mosquito vectors, malaria and other vector-borne diseases

Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) pose a major threat to the health of societies around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), VBDs account for around 17% of the estimated global burden of communicable diseases (before the COVID-19 pandemics) and claim >700.000 lives every year and huge public health and economic costs. The burden is highest in tropical and subtropical areas, where > 240 million yearly cases are reported. More than 80% of the global population live in areas at risk from at least one major vector-borne disease, with more than half at risk from two or more. The dynamic and complex nature of vector-borne pathogens complicates predictions of the impact of existing, re-emerging or new VBDs on human health. Despite this unpredictability and global efforts to fight against vector-borne pathogens and their vectors, WHO expects both intensification of some VBDs and emergence of others (particularly mosquito-borne arboviruses) also in temperate regions, including Europe. Research on vector-borne pathogens, vectors and human and non-human hosts and on their reciprocal interactions in relation to social and climatic changes has been and must continue to be a foundation upon which VBD control programs are built. Research on topics related to VBDs is one of the core interest of the parasitology units at DSPMI, starting from pivotal studies on Afrotropical malaria vector bionomics and evolution and on human genetics and malaria and extending in the last couple of decades to studies on pathogen-mosquito interactions, arbovirus mosquito vectors bionomics and epidemiology, vectors of zoonotic or animal diseases (e.g. sandflies and Drosophilids), as well as to studies on genetic, metabolic and behavioral insecticide resistance mechanisms and on the development and validation of novel diagnostic, monitoring and control tools. These research activities are carried out in collaboration with extensive network of collaborators in Italy (e.g., Università degli Studi di Bari, Camerino, Trento, Piemonte Orientale, Napoli Federico II, Istituto Superiore di Sanità; IZS Venezie; Fondazione Edmund Mach, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Fondazione Policlinico Militare Celio, MUSE di Trento), Europe (e.g., Universities of Glasgow, Imperial College London, Liverpool Schools of Tropical Medicine, Institut Pasteur Paris, IRD Montpellier), US and America (e.g., National Institute of Health, Yale University, Notre-Dame University, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia) and Africa (e.g., Centre National de Recherche et de Formation sur le Paludisme in Burkina Faso, University of Ouagadougou, Institut Pasteur de Côte d’Ivoire, Institut Pasteur of Dakar Senegal). The researchers are involved in large international networks (e.g. MalariaGEN coordinated by Oxford University), play leading roles at the European level (e.g. coordination of the Aedes Invasive Mosquito AIM-COST Action funded by EC Horizon Europe) and are funded by several agencies as EC, NIH-USA, Italian Ministry of Research (including MUR PNRR Extended Partnership initiative on Emerging Infectious Diseases, Project no. PE00000007, INF-ACT), Italian Ministry of Defense, Institut Pasteur Paris, Institut Pasteur - Fondazione Cenci-Bolognetti, Università Sapienza research grants.