Purdue-Enveda effort seeks to control malaria-spreading mosquitoes

Project targets development of novel insecticides derived from nature with AI

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University is leading a $1.7 million project funded by the Gates Foundation to develop new insecticides for combating malaria and other diseases using artificial intelligence and natural products.

The three-year project will combine Purdue’s expertise in high-throughput screening of anti-mosquito chemistries with the innovative, AI-driven platform of biotechnology partner Enveda. “Our goal is to continue the fight against malaria that so many are still facing today,” said Catherine Hill, professor and department head of entomology at Purdue.

“Malaria is a serious, potentially fatal, disease. It’s transmitted by the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito,” Hill said. The disease infects about 250 million people annually, resulting in 400,000 to 500,000 deaths. 

“Deaths primarily occur in pregnant women and young children. It’s one of the most deadly, difficult-to-control diseases. The burden of the disease is greatest in sub-Saharan Africa,” Hill said.

Hill’s chief collaborators on the project are Marvin Yu, vice president of platform chemistry at Enveda, a leading biotechnology company based in Boulder, Colorado, and Tendai Chisowa, Enveda’s director of policy and development. Additional contributors receiving funding from the Gates Foundation are researchers at the University of Florida, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas in Crete, Greece.

This project is a part of Purdue’s presidential One Health initiative, which involves research at the intersection of human, animal and plant health and well-being. 

The project targets Anopheles mosquitoes, the malaria-transmitting genus that includes 460 or more species worldwide, of which 30 to 40 transmit the malaria parasite. Malaria is a significant problem in over 80 nations.

Mosquitoes have developed widespread resistance to commonly used insecticides, threatening continued control. Now the challenge is to identify sources for new novel chemical compounds.

“Plants grown in-country are more suitable for cultivation and industrial scale-up to produce a homegrown mosquito control product,” Hill said. The project could lead to working in-country on product development and production to support local economies.

Vaccines and drug treatments for malaria infections exist, but delivering them to the nations in need presents logistical challenges. Today malaria is largely suppressed via mosquito population control, and infectious bites are prevented via insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor sprays.

“Partners and funders have been trying to bring new active ingredients for those products,” Hill noted. “But those options are not going to cover us forever, and we’re running short. This project is about stepping in to keep that pipeline and those product options strong and to improve and make them safer and more effective.” 

The project collaborators will implement high-throughput screening of anti-mosquito chemistries augmented by Enveda’s AI-driven natural products discovery platform. The collaborators expect to increase their success rate by combining Enveda’s proprietary AI technology for pharmaceutical drug discovery in nature with the computational drug and insecticide discovery expertise of project partners.

The researchers are looking for novel bioactive ingredients derived from plants that will offer effective control of malaria mosquitoes and improved safety profiles because they’re from natural products. “We’re also applying AI to help accelerate how we find plants that we target for biomass acquisition and extracting natural products,” Hill said.

“The challenge is finding the chemistry. “By rapidly identifying promising natural compounds from African plants, this AI-driven approach promises significantly faster, smarter and more targeted solutions than the traditional insecticide discovery process,” Hill said.

The standard path for developing new insecticide products requires 12-15 years. “We don’t have 12-15 years to wait,” Hill said. “If we could get a new product into the vector control market within four to five years, that would be amazing.”

The process for finding and developing bioactive compounds is time-consuming and expensive.  “Once we find them, we want to protect and preserve them,” she said. “If we can work out how to manage resistance development, we could potentially have products that are effective tools in the marketplace that control malaria for a lot longer.”

If successful, the model could extend beyond Anopheles to other groups of vector mosquitoes that transmit infectious diseases such as dengue and yellow fever in other parts of the world, Hill said.

“We know how insecticide discovery works and what it takes to drive new molecules into markets,” said Hill, also a former industry scientist. “We know where there are potential points for innovation in that whole process. It’s exciting to be working at the intersection of insecticide discovery and AI to speed it up.”