The ICMR-Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC), Puducherry, has filed patent applications for two of its unique products — an artificial diet and feeding device for mosquitoes reared in laboratory — with the Indian Patent Office recently.
The team has also planned to approach to patent it at global level.
“Both the products have been awarded a unique number which will protect the Intellectual Property (IP) of both,’’ Dr. Ashwani Kumar, Director of VCRC said.
The two products allow efficient and cost-effective mass-rearing of mosquitoes in laboratory as it is important to keep these mosquitoes healthy to investigate basic facets of their biology and to study vector-borne disease and measures to control it.
Speaking about the products, Dr. Nisha Mathew, one of the inventors who formulated 18 different diets, said: “Mosquito females require animal or human blood diet to produce eggs. For this, blood has to be obtained from blood banks or live animals with proper human and animal ethical clearance. Regular supply of blood from blood banks is not easy. Considering these challenges and huge potential demand, we at Institute have zeroed in on four artificial diets for feeding.’’
She further explains, “These four diets prepared for female mosquitoes is like a baby formula food and has all the essential nutrients, which are present in the blood. These diets would attract hungry female mosquitoes to accept the meal, taste it like blood, produce healthy and viable eggs which should hatch like normal eggs, form healthy useful for laboratory research and mass production whenever necessary.”
Dr. Kumar said that the foods needed to be kept at a certain temperature. “It was very difficult to maintain the feed temperature to the optimum level of 37oC, which is human body temperature, by usual water circulation or by using the melted wax,” he said.
Dr. Mathew said, “Hence a device with controlled temperature was invented, a prototype made and also evaluated for mosquito feeding capability. This could easily replace the conventional hot water circulator-based feeding device.”
The director said, “These products are a success story of an artificial mosquito diet and feeder that is commercially viable and technically sound and has great potential in rearing mosquitoes for research purposes and also for the mass production of mosquitoes for their control based on sterile insect technology, population replacement, or population reduction study and Wolbachia endosymbiont bacteria-based control operations.
Speaking about how these innovations will help the director said that these products are a success story of an artificial mosquito diet and feeder that is commercially viable and technically sound and has great potential in rearing mosquitoes for research purposes and also for the mass production of mosquitoes for their control based on sterile insect technology, population replacement, or population reduction study and Wolbachia endosymbiont bacteria-based control operations.
