Gates Foundation gives another $50M for mosquito insecticides

The Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC) has been given a second $50 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, funding its work in the development of new insecticides for the improved control of mosquitoes and other insects which transmit disease for a further five years.

IVCC was established in 2005 with an initial grant of $50.7 million and since then has engaged with the major agrichemicals companies in the joint development of a pipeline of new, reformulated and repurposed insecticides.

The mission of the IVCC, which is a UK-registered charity based at the School of Tropical Medicine at Liverpool University, is to reduce transmission of insect borne diseases through improved control of the insects that transmit them.

Apart from supporting the development of new pesticides, IVCC provides information tools to enable the more effective use of existing and new control measures, and works with people in the countries where diseases are endemic, and with industry to set out the required properties of insecticides.

In particular, IVCC aims to develop alternatives to pyrethroids for use in areas where insects have become resistant to this class of insecticide, to re-purpose agricultural insecticides for the public health market, to stimulate the development of new insecticides for use in public health and to devise formulations that have long-term stability.

All the major R&D-based industrial pesticide manufacturers that are active in the disease vector control market are engaged with the IVCC and have active projects under way or in preparation.

The new five year grant will support new and ongoing projects to develop new insecticides and to complete the existing portfolio of insecticide formulation and repurposing projects.

Janet Hemingway CEO of IVCC said the need for new insecticides has never been greater. “Increased funding for control programmes is saving thousands of lives but malaria is still killing one child in Africa every 45 seconds. Resistance to insecticides is increasing at an alarming rate and we must find new alternatives [just to stand] still in our battle against this, and other vector borne diseases.”

Hemingway said the new award will allow IVCC to carry on the work it is doing in partnership with the chemical industry, to find and develop totally new classes of insecticide. “Our strategic aim is to provide three new active ingredients for use in public health insecticides by 2020.”

IVCC is a product development partnership established as a not-for-profit company and registered charity, to overcome the barriers to innovation in the development of new insecticides and to develop information systems and tools ,which will enable new and existing pesticides to be used more effectively.

Killing insects that transmit diseases is a cornerstone of efforts to control diseases such as malaria and dengue, but effective interventions are increasingly under threat from the emergence and spread of insecticide resistance and from limitations in the ways that insecticides are used.

IVCC says its business model has “unlock[ed] the latent enthusiasm of the global pest control industry” in the development of new public health insecticides.