A Great Weapon Against Dengue fever

A Malaysian prince is promoting a novel weapon against the worsening scourge of dengue fever: a protein 'pill' that starves mosquito larvae and could revolutionise the global fight against dengue. 

According to the World Health Organization, dengue virus kills 20,000 people every year and more than 2.5 billion people, which is about 40 per cent of Earth's population, live in areas susceptible to the mosquito-borne virus, with as many as 100 million infected annually. 

The dengue is mainly transmitted to humans by the aedes aegypti mosquito, and causes symptoms including high fever, body aches, rashes and heavy fatigue. In severe cases, white blood cells drop to potentially fatal levels. 

Prince Naquiyuddin Jaafar

Prince Naquiyuddin Jaafar, one of the most popular members of Malaysia's nobility, whose anti-dengue technology targets the offspring of mosquitoes. His biotech company which he founded in 2007, EntoGenex, which has taken a protein called the trypsin modulating oostatic factor, or TMOF, and developed it into what he calls a fatal 'diet pill' for mosquitoes.

TMOF is mixed into yeast cells which are then inserted in rice husks, allowing them to float on water where they will be eaten by mosquito larvae, said Alan Brandt, EntoGenex's research head. 

'Larvae love yeast.' 

Once consumed, it shuts down mosquito larvae's digestive systems, starving them to death before they can grow and spread dengue, Naquiyuddin said at the firm's high-tech research facility in Kuala Lumpur. 

'The 'pill' has a 100 per cent success rate against all larvae species within 24 hours, and there is no way for resistance to build as it is not a toxic chemical but a protein which only affects mosquitoes,' he said. 

TMOF is harmless to animals and humans, Brandt said. The firm has combined the TMOF with the equally tongue-twisting bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) bacteria, which eats holes in the guts of larvae but is non-toxic to people. 

Most larvae die within an hour, and nearly all within 24 hours, according to EntoGenex, which has held several successful Malaysian field trials with universities and health authorities.

'What they have come up with is quite remarkable in combining Bti and TMOF, and the field trials have shown that there is success in using it,' said the Malaysian Health Ministry's Disease Control Division director Chong Chee Kheong.