Target Malaria

Now, Esvelt is a professor at MIT who pioneered CRISPR-based gene drives, which is a technique to insert intentional genetic mutations into a wild population, something that could be used for, say, eradicating mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

Target malaria within five years of when we disclosed CRISPR-based gene drive had developed a version that could crash the population of this mosquito in cages, crash it to lo- levels low enough that it won't be able to transmit malaria anymore.

Or the New World screw worm, which was eliminated from the United States but is making a comeback right now.

But get this, surprisingly, once he had proven that his gene drive research worked, he did a really strange thing.

Um, have you released these gene drives? Are we are on the way to eliminating malarial mosquitoes right now?

So there, most of the credit goes to Austin Burt, who had the original idea we should build programmable gene drives, and CRISPR just let us do it.

And he's been working with an org called Target Malaria that's been working on basically the malarial mosquitoes.

And they've come the closest in that they've built one that would do the job.

And it's funny because these are the countries he was kicked out of for sterilizing, uh, females, right? So Burkina Faso became the first country to formally halt and...

Now, notice it says first country to halt and ban operations by Target Malaria, a research consortium funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ordering a nationwide cessation of activities, meaning done, finito.

Destruction of genetically modified mosquito samples in 2025 as well.

And so what's funny about that is that he just released genetically modified mosquitoes in America.

Just saying yes to everything is beneficial and then trying to carve it out properly after.

What's one thing you'd tell someone who never put in an application that you used to do yourself before you knew better? hi guys and welcome back to the boldly ambitious podcast we're your hosts i'm lydie and i'm hazel we're doctors founders and entrepreneurs in our 20s and this is a space for the ambitious girlies chasing big dreams and building bold lives and today we're joined by the amazing zainab shire she is a recent graduate from a prestigious rostrum group university zainab has since been working at the mayor of london office where she started as an intern before moving into a new role as content creator and communications officer She's also previously interned at Target Malaria, the global health research organization funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, served as a humanitarian affairs peace ambassador at the Global Peace Summit in Bangkok, and is a contributor to the national youth initiative Girls Who Talk Politics, all while still being in her early 20s.

and this conversation is for the girl who wants more experience more exposure and more opportunities but doesn't always know where to look or how to make herself stand out so today we're getting into how to actually find the internships programs and opportunities that build your career and how to turn one opportunity into the next Welcome

Zainab.

A lot of attention is going into this at the moment.

The organization Target Malaria, for example, is researching how to use gene drives to reduce the number of malaria mosquitoes.

They say, "This work is still at an early stage, but our models indicate that this method has the potential to significantly reduce the number of malaria mosquitoes and the transmission of malaria within a socially relevant timeframe."

That's super exciting and sounds incredibly complicated to actually do.