The Mosquito Guillotine

Why is the malaria vaccine so elusive? Because the immune response required to shield someone against the parasite must be sky high.  

A novel effort to achieve a mass-produced vaccine involves a rather antique method: beheading.

The mozzie massacre has a purpose: enabling dissection of the salivary glands where the malaria-causing parasite lives. Even highly trained dissectors could only extract 300 parasites an hour.

Robots would speed things up even more. So biotech outfit Sanaria teamed up with Johns Hopkins University medical roboticists to create a mini mosquito guillotine that can lop off 30 heads at a time.


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