In today’s fight, one of our greatest weapons is that of gene editing. Researchers from Imperial College’s South Kensington campus are leading this fight by targeting malaria. With $70 million funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation thus far, these researchers are about to release a swarm of some 10,000 genetically-modified male mosquitos in Burkina Faso.

Why? With around 9.8 million cases of malaria recorded last year in Burkina Faso alone, resulting in around 4,000 deaths, researchers are hoping that the introduction of infertile male mosquitos will dramatically reduce the female mosquito population, considering it’s the female population that are transmitting the disease.

The first round of introducing genetically-modified mosquitos into the population will simply serve as a test to determine whether the researchers are able to control the mosquitos as hypothesized. Though, the long-term goal is to eventually reduce the mosquito population as a whole, thus eliminating the threat of malaria.

In other parts of the world, gene editing is being used to combat other diseases. More specifically, in China, researchers are using CRISPR base-editing to swap DNA letters in order to address genetic defects within viable human embryos. Cancer is another big disease to which CRISPR is being used in hopes of developing cures. In one of their studies, Chinese researchers are using CRISPR to knock out the PD-1 gene within T cells, which they believe will help T cells zero in on and attack cancer cells.