IVCC would be nothing without our industrial partners.

We have a great mission— to save lives by preventing malaria with repurposed or new classes of insecticides that kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

Since 2005 we’ve worked with a great cloud of scientists, researching millions of chemical compounds to find the best ones to stop malaria. We’ve helped apply the best minds in chemistry, reformulations, and all kinds of other scientific magic that I know little about.

Except that it works, and it is working, and we’re nearly there with the new active ingredients that will transform malaria vector control. Yes, and save lives. Millions of lives. Young children and pregnant women will no longer die from this preventable disease.

So, it’s very appropriate on World Malaria Day, to say thank you to all IVCC’s industrial partners. That includes scientists at BASF, Bayer, Sumitomo, Syngenta and Mitsui. We couldn’t do it without your quiet, selfless dedication to solve a critical and global public health crisis. In the battle against malaria I think you are truly heroes.

Thank you for everything you do. You are truly making the world a better place.

Watch the film Heroic Chemistry 

IVCC this week attended Syngenta’s 2017 Good Growth Plan event in Brussels, Belgium.  Dr Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC was interviewed about their partnership programme and spent time with Syngenta CEO Erik Fyrwald.  Earlier in the day, David Maguire, IVCC’s NgenIRS Director presented to over 200 invited guests providing an insight on how Syngenta’s malarial insecticide Actellic©CS300 is being used, with the support of IVCC and its funder UNITAID, to deliver next generation indoor residual spray programmes across sub-Saharan Africa.

Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC said: “Field trial partners in Africa play an essential role in the testing of novel vector control products being developed and one of the most important elements of the field trial is the quality of the data generated, as this is the key to establishing the true nature of the products being tested.”

Since 2000, IVCC, in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, has been working to strengthen the quality and reliability of data generated by African vector control field trial sites.  This work has included the development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), the auditing of facilities, and follow-up Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) training workshops.

An important element of IVCC’s GLP rollout programme has also been its funding of infrastructure improvements including buildings and equipment at its collaborating trial sites.  This capacity building is establishing a network of facilities in Africa that can generate testing data on vector control products of the highest standard.

Professor Franklin Mosha, Test Facility Manager for the KCMUCo facility said: “Reaching this important milestone is a major achievement for IVCC and KCMUCo, and credit is due to all of the staff in Moshi who have implemented enormous changes in relation to their facilities, working practices and culture over a relatively short but intense period of time.”

Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC added: “A future network of GLP certified trials sites across Africa will allow manufacturers of vector control products to generate their own efficacy data for inclusion in their product dossiers submitted to the WHO product evaluation process. This represents a major step forward for vector control product testing, which will be of major importance in delivering the IVCC mission and malaria elimination in the future.”

Six further IVCC collaborating trials sites are now planning their GLP studies and will be submitting their applications for OECD GLP certification through SANAS.

Notes to journalist

IVCC

IVCC is a non-profit public-private partnership, which aims to save lives, protect health, and increase prosperity in areas where disease transmitted by insects is endemic. It brings together the best minds to develop new solutions to prevent disease transmission. By focusing resources and targeting practical scientific solutions, it accelerates the process from innovation to impact.  IVCC has several novel public health insecticide active ingredients at the point of final development, for delivery in about 2022.  Although primarily targeted at malaria vectors, these insecticides will have application to other NTDs.  IVCC is also currently exploring control of mosquitoes that transmit outdoors and during the day.

Although I have never lived in Africa, I’ve travelled there enough times to have a reasonable feel for the place. Urban Africa, busy, chaotic and unsafe contrasts enormously with the friendliness and warmth of Africans in rural communities, who despite their obvious hardship, will ask me to stop and share a cup of bitter tea with them.   The remote villages I visit lack many of the conveniences that we take for granted.   Mostly, there’s no running water, electricity is occasional and the air at dusk is filled with smoke as food is prepared and cooked in family compounds. Living is basic, but there’s a strange contrast between pinging money using mobile phones with crushing caterpillars to eat and livestock living amongst families with crowds gathering around flat screen TVs to watch Champions League football.

Life can be exceptionally tough.  Basic food may be available year-round for most so while there may be little excess it looks like no one starves.  There’s not much money and that’s ok when hard work is the main price for food, but the lack of access to a modern healthcare infrastructure can mean that when disease hits, there can be no money to pay for treatments, and this can devastate families and villages without warning.

90% of malaria cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and kills over 400,000 people every year – the vast majority of which are children under five.

Many villages have insecticide-treated bednets which provide proven malaria protection when sleeping at night. But there are never enough, mosquitoes can bite at times when no one is under their net and outside the home, and not everyone likes to use them.   Now and again when you ask if a householder has a bednet, they pull out an unused net, still in the bag to show.

Insecticide treated bednets not only provide personal protection through the physical barrier of the net, but the insecticide also provides effective community protection as contact with the net kills the mosquito meaning it can’t fly off and infect someone else.

However, this critical community effect which reduces the volume of biting mosquitoes, only works if the mosquito is not resistant to the insecticide.  Resistance is a huge issue today.  We are at a critical tipping point and without innovation in insecticide resistance, the huge gains in malaria reduction we have made since 2000 could rapidly unwind with devastating effect, but insecticide resistance is complex. There are different underlying mechanisms in different locations, species of mosquito and regions that impact the performance of different insecticides in different ways that makes measuring the benefits of different interventions on disease transmission complex.

That’s why the arrival of BASF’s Interceptor® G2 is so important.  This net introduces a safe and reformulated insecticide from agriculture into public health – a first in 30 years.  Because mosquitoes have not been exposed to it before, it will be effective against mosquitoes that are resistant to the insecticides that are commonly used on bednets.  Of course, this product alone will not solve the problem.  More resistance beating public health insecticides need to be developed and used in a way that preserves their effectiveness in the long term by developing and following resistance prevention strategies.

That’s why IVCC is working with companies across the world to develop new public health insecticides for bednets as well as new resistance beating formulas for spraying on the inside walls of homes, another proven and effective intervention.  We are also investigating a range of other technologies which will reduce outdoor biting.  We have a long way to go but we are hopeful that, together with our industry partners like BASF and our dedicated funders, innovation in vector control can help create a world without malaria.

The Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC) is delighted to announce that, resulting from a collaboration with BASF and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, a new type of Long Lasting Insecticidal Net (LLIN) has received a recommendation for use by the World Health Organization (WHO).

This new LLIN, Interceptor® G2, combines the current pyrethroid class of public health insecticide used in bednets across malaria endemic countries, with a repurposed insecticide from agriculture called Chlorfenapyr.  The successful mixture of these two active ingredients coated on a LLIN represents a major advance in the mission to overcome insecticide resistance.  Chlorfenapyr has a different mode of action from current WHO recommended public health insecticides.

Liverpool based IVCC played an instrumental part in bringing this product to the recommendation stage, supporting and funding the project during the field trials and, as project partner, leading the technical progress of the project through its External Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC).

Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC said: “Interceptor® G2 is a major step forward in the battle against mosquito insecticide resistance.  We hope and expect this to be the first of several novel vector control products IVCC will support bringing to market in the coming years to help eradicate malaria”.

“Developing new vector control tools would not be possible without the dedication of our industry partners and the visionary support of our funders.  Without the financial backing of organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UKaid, the complex development, testing and evidence gathering exercises needed to support novel vector control products would simply not be possible.  They, along with BASF, deserve immense credit.”

Dave Malone, Technical Manager at IVCC added; “The growing intensity and distribution of resistance to pyrethroids threatens to undermine the great progress that has been made against malaria by the use of LLINs, particularly in sub-Saharan African where 90 per cent of malaria deaths occur.  By combining pyrethroids with a new class of chemistry, these new LLINs have the potential to protect and save many more lives.”