Target Malaria is a not-for-profit research consortium that aims to develop and share technology for malaria control. Target Malaria started as university-based research programme and has grown to include scientists, stakeholder engagement teams, risk assessment specialists and regulatory experts from Africa, North America and Europe.

Target Malaria receives core funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and from the Open Philanthropy Project Fund, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Individual labs also received additional funding from a variety of sources to support each lab’s work, including DEFRA, the European Commission, MRC, NIH, Ugandan Ministry of Health, Wellcome Trust, UNCST.

The partner institutions include: CDC Foundation, USA, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, USA, Imperial College London, UK, Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (IRSS), Burkina Faso, Keele University, UK, Malaria Research & Training Center, Université des Sciences, des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako, Mali, Polo d’Innovazione di Genomica, Genetica e Biologia (Polo GGB), Italy, USA, Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), Uganda, University of Cambridge, UK, University of Notre Dame, USA, University of Oxford, UK, University of Perugia, Italy, University of Washington, USA.

Their teams are organised around ‘functions’, often working across multiple locations.

Their Work

Target Malaria is an innovative project aiming to reduce the population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa. By reducing the population of malaria mosquitoes, they aim to reduce the transmission of the disease.

They are focused on reducing the number of female malaria mosquitoes. Only female mosquitoes bite and the number of productive females in a population will usually determine future population size.