Foundation for the National Institutes of Health — Working Group on Malaria Gene Drive Testing Path

[Science for Global Health] We decided to write about this grant in order to share the rationale for our interest in gene drives. This page is a summary of the reasoning behind our decision to recommend the grant; it was not written by the grant investigator(s). Foundation for the National Institutes of Health staff reviewed this page prior to publication. The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $1,228,845 to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) to form a working group to support development of a consensus pathway for field testing modified mosquitoes with driving transgenes. The FNIH proposes to convene a working group of approximately twenty experts to recommend a consensus path for field testing gene drives to fight malaria. This recommendation will include guidelines on how to safely field test gene drives for population modification and population suppression of vector mosquitoes in order to determine whether they could safely and ethically be deployed widely. To date, the FNIH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have been key actors supporting the development of this new technology, including commissioning of prior independent studies to consider best practices, and we think the FNIH is well positioned to convene a working group to develop a field testing pathway that can be used to inform researchers and other stakeholders. Our hope is that developing consensus around a testing pathway will clarify the requirements and reduce the amount of time needed before a gene drive affecting malarial burdens could be released, if the technology is eventually determined to be feasible, safe, and ethical. 1. Background 1.1 The cause As part of our work to investigate potential focus areas within the category of scientific research, we became aware of a relatively new technology called “gene drives” (see this New York Times article for an overview). One important potential application of gene drives that has been discussed is to prevent the spread of malaria by significantly reducing the population of mosquitos that can carry it.