Post by PfVIMT Project

🦟 Direct Skin Feeding (DSF): at the core of evaluating malaria transmission-blocking vaccines within PfVIMT Within the Global Health EDCTP3 funded PfVIMT project, Direct Skin Feeding (DSF) plays a central role in our scientific strategy to assess the efficacy of malaria vaccines. DSF is a unique bioassay: it consists of exposing laboratory-reared mosquitoes, maintained under controlled conditions, to human volunteers in order to closely replicate natural conditions of parasite transmission. This approach is essential within PfVIMT for several key reasons: ➡️ It enables direct measurement of a vaccine’s ability to block parasite transmission to mosquitoes under near-field conditions ➡️ It provides a key functional endpoint for so-called “transmission-blocking” vaccines, such as Pfs230D1 ➡️ It serves as a biologically relevant, reasonably predictive correlate of efficacy, supporting the acceleration of clinical and regulatory development pathways ➡️ It links human immune responses to a measurable impact on mosquito infection In previous studies forming part of the project rationale, Pfs230D1 demonstrated a reduction in mosquito infection of over 75%, highlighting the strong relevance of these experimental approaches. 🎥 The video illustrates the full DSF process as implemented by Issaka Sagara and Sylla Daman at Faculté des Sciences et Techniques (FST)-USTTB, Mali, which plays a central operational role in conducting these activities. The same standards and procedures are applied across all PfVIMT consortium sites, ensuring comparability and robustness of the data. 🔬 Process shown in the video: • Mosquito production and preparation (egg laying, rearing, sorting, conditioning 3–5 days) • Identification and enrolment of participants • Clinical and entomological procedures • Mosquito dissection and slide reading • Oocyst imaging and preservation of positive midguts • Data entry and management This integrated approach is at the heart of PfVIMT: linking human immunology, mosquito biology, and vaccine efficacy within a single experimental chain, to support the development of multi-stage malaria vaccines. IRD Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) Ifakara Health Institute Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) Imperial College London Institut de Recherche Clinique du Bénin (IRCB) Groupe de Recherche Action en Santé _GRAS Jules Treuille #MalariaResearch #Vaccines #GlobalHealth #TransmissionBlocking #ClinicalResearch #Entomology

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