Subhechcha Ganguly 
Researchers have once again made significant progress after transforming one of the most contagious parasites into a vehicle for vaccine delivery. 200 mosquitoes were used in the trial, which the group conducted.
Even though comparable studies have been done in the past, the new findings are more noteworthy since CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) was applied for the first time. With this, the scientists were able to genetically alter the repulsive insects to transmit malaria vaccines through mosquito bites. The trial’s results, which were reported in Science Translational Medicine, indicated that 14 of the 26 participants in the study later developed malaria, showing that the delivery method is only 50 percent successful in most situations. However, this is better than the first malaria vaccine ever developed, which had an efficacy rate of around 30–40% and was approved by the World Health Organization last year in 2021.
Carolina Reid, one of the participants, informed NPR (National Public Radio, US) about her experience. She said that she had to lay her arm over a cardboard box with 200 mosquitoes, after which a volunteer covered it with a dark cloth because mosquitoes like to bite at night. Later, she discovered that her entire forearm had blisters and swelling. We employ mosquitoes like they’re 1,000 tiny flying syringes, according to Dr. Sean Murphy, a biologist at the University of Washington and the first author of the study. However, the goal is to find a more economical way of creating and dispersing vaccinations rather than to release massive numbers of mosquitoes that are vaccinated against malaria rather than spreading it.
