"Scientists turn mosquitoes ‘into a vaccination tool’"

"Mosquitoes typically spread disease, rather than prevent it, but Chinese scientists have proposed using the insects as an unlikely vector to deliver vaccines to bats.

In a study published in Science Advances journal, researchers designed mosquitoes which carry an immunization for rabies and Nipah viruses within their saliva. This is transferred when bats eat insects, or the insects feed on the bats...

In one route, researchers fed the Aedes aegypti mosquito blood containing the vaccine, which replicates inside the insect’s salivary glands. This means it is transferred when the insect bites the bat, or the bat eats the insects...

'We want to turn the mosquito into a vaccination tool,' Aihua Zheng, a virologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-author of the report, told NPR. 'I’m pretty excited with these result[s].'"