What if we adopt a new strategy to fight against the scourge of malaria? Failing to find a remedy or a miracle treatment against this deadly disease, researchers look at means that would allow those who transmit it: mosquitoes. Their idea is simple: to circulate in our blood a molecule which poisons insects when they come to prick us. You will always have a small button, but the flying insect will never annoy anyone again.
This famous molecule, Nitisinone, was the subject of a study published on March 26, 2025 in the journal Science Translational Medicine, and which reports encouraging results. Even administered in low doses, it would make human blood so toxic to mosquitoes they would die in a few hours after consuming it. The drug would be effective up to twelve days after the first administration.
“We use a drug that is already approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, Editor’s note)because it is used to treat rare genetic diseases ”explains Álvaro Acosta Serrano, parasitologist, molecular biologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Great Britain, co-author of the study.
The National Geographic magazine writes that the use of Nitisinone is currently authorized in newborns and young children, and that no adverse effect has been reported in pregnant women. For good reason, the exploitation of this molecule does not date from yesterday. Inspired by a vegetable toxin, it was first used as an insecticide. We then discovered very different properties since it allows to treat a fatal genetic disease called tyrosinemia of type I. The people who suffer from it fail to metabolize tyrosine, an essential amino acid. “It is the only thing that has made it possible to live the affected children”complete Álvaro Acosta Serrano about the miracle molecule.
Drink, this is my blood
The link between the molecule and the mosquitoes was made in 2016. At the time, Marcos Sterkel and Pedro Oliveira, two Brazilian researchers, discover that hematophagous insects like mosquitoes, are able to quickly metabolize tyrosine … and they die if you prevent them. Another treatment, the ivermectin had already been envisaged. Based on these previous ones, Álvaro Acosta Serrano, tested the capacity of Nitisinone to fulfill this function.
Scientists have indeed abandoned the idea of defeating the disease: “There is no trial solution against malaria. And I don’t think there will be one day ”, Land on George Dimopoulos, a molecular biologist specializing in diseases transmitted by mosquitoes. The idea here is to create collective immunity by administering treatment to as many people as possible. Thus, mosquitoes will die before they can reproduce, breaking the infection chain.
However, several obstacles arise to set up such a device. “It is always difficult to convince people to take a drug that does not protect them”explains George Dimopoulos, pointing to the finger that this strategy is based on the fact that individuals are pricked by mosquitoes at the risk of their lives.
In addition, Nitisinone is an excessively expensive molecule. And, “Malaria is a disease of poverty”note the biologist. “Everything that becomes expensive is doomed to failure, especially with an intervention method like this.” Álvaro Acosta Serrano subscribes to this observation and hopes that the growing interest in his work and for his daring idea, can bring down the price of the molecule.
