Unmet NeedMalaria is one of the world’s most common mosquito-borne illnesses, with an estimated 219 million cases and 435,000 deaths in 2017. An estimated $12 billion is lost every year in Africa due to malaria. Although vaccines have been developed to eradicate malaria, vaccine production is hindered by an inefficient process and high costs. Vaccine production requires collection of mosquito salivary glands, which must be carefully extracted from a mosquito’s thorax with tweezers and hypodermic needles. Technicians must operate within micrometers of accuracy to detach the mosquito’s head before ejecting its salivary gland. With a throughput of approximately 4-8 mosquitos per minute, this approach is slow, costly, and highly dependent on the technician’s skill. In 2014, Sanaria, Inc. and Harvard University’s Biorobotics lab developed an automated dissection system known as the Sporobot, which dissects mosquitos 20-30x faster than technicians. However, the Sporobot is expensive, and does not automate the whole process; technicians still have to load and orient each mosquito, creating a severe bottleneck that limits extraction efficiency. Hence, there is an unmet need for an automated method to extract mosquitoes’ salivary glands that can independently load and orient mosquitos, is cost-effective, and increases speed and throughput of extraction.
Technology DescriptionThis device uses rotary fluid flow to automate the process of loading, sorting, and orienting mosquitoes so as to extract their salivary glands. Unlike current manual approaches, the machine can properly orient and load mosquitos into their respective slots with minimal human intervention, which normalizes mosquito locations to optimize dissection accuracy and efficiency. The device comprises of a large basin with a liquid solution in which mosquitos are suspended. A rotating Archimedes screw then propels the mosquito suspension out of the basin where it then flows down into a funnel. As the mosquitos are channeled through the narrowing funnel, they are aligned into a single-file stream in a head-first or tail-first orientation. Each mosquito will exit the funnel into a slot, where computer vision determines the direction that the mosquito’s head is pointing. Head-front mosquitos are decapitated and their salivary glands forced outwards via a stamp press, then collected in a trough. Head-back mosquitos are allowed to flow back into the basin for re-orientation. The device represents an improvement over existing systems due to its low manufacturing production cost, which will lower vaccine production expenses, and its modular design, which allows its components to easily be replaced. Its fully automated process of loading and orienting the mosquitos improves its speed and throughput compared to current machines, which still rely on manual positioning.
Stage of DevelopmentThe inventors have developed a prototype of the device.
