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Moderated conference on GMOs in the pipeline, hosted by the FAO Biotechnology Forum in 2012

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Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:08:27 +0100
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My name is Camilla Beech and I am the regulatory manager for an SME company called Oxitec Ltd, based in the UK.   

I would like to make the conference aware of some very different applications of genetically engineered (GE) animals, namely those of GE insects for the control of pest insects in both agriculture and human health. These were not listed in the conference background document but are very much tools that will be available within the 5 year timeframe under discussion. [Insects that are genetically modified for agricultural purposes were not specifically mentioned in the Background Document, but are indeed relevant to this conference on 'GMOs in the pipeline in developing countries'...Moderator].

Pest insects are devastating in terms of agricultural/horticultural losses and for the transmission of human diseases such as dengue and malaria. The pesticides used in controlling mosquitoes are largely ineffective, as not all breeding sites can be accessed and mosquitoes are increasingly resistant to them. The World Health Organisation estimates that there are between 50 and 100 million cases of dengue each year, and these are only the reported cases, many more go undiagnosed. There is no therapeutic treatment for dengue and a vaccine is someway off. Therefore new tools are urgently required to control the populations of the dengue mosquito.

The technology is based on enhancement to the sterile insect technique (SIT), that has been used for over 50 years, where insects are mass-reared, made sterile (usually through irradiation) and then released regularly at inundative ratios to mate with wild populations. The resulting offspring do not survive and therefore the population is subsequently controlled. The irradiation used to sterilise insects is too damaging for many species and makes high levels of training and security necessary. For some insect pests, there are no methods for cheap, large scale rearing or to separate the sexes. Oxitec has developed a new solution which will replace the need for irradiation and make it easier to sort males from females - making SIT more affordable, even safer, and applicable to a wider range of pests. Oxitec has inserted genes that confer a dominant conditional lethality to the insects, so the progeny of matings with released insects do not survive to adulthood. The approach is targeted at a single species, unlike conventional insecticides or pesticides which kill insects indiscriminately. This means that, as well as being more effective, it is much better for the environment than conventional pesticides. One advantage is that all the modified insects contain a heritable, fluorescent marker to distinguish them from native pest insects and to help scientists with the management of pest control programmes through monitoring (an essential component of any insect control program). 

For Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue fever there have already been open field trials of the modified mosquito in Grand Cayman, Malaysia and Brazil and the results have shown that population suppression can be achieved by 80-85% despite immigration of mosquitoes to the area (Harris et al, 2012; Lacroix et al, 2012). The approach is targeted towards disease endemic countries as a potential tool to control the mosquito populations that transmit diseases such as dengue and the World Health Organisation has produced a draft common framework for risk assessment which is currently available for public consultation (http://www.who.int/tdr/news/2012/guidance_framework/en/index.html)

However the approach is also suitable for the control of agricultural pests and we have strains of Plutella xylostella, Pectinophora gossypiella, Ceratitis capitata, Anastrepha ludens, and Bactrocera oleae containing the conditional lethal traits, as well as working on emerging pests such as Tuta absoluta. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2009 produced an environmental risk assessment for genetically engineered fruit flies and pink bollworm that concluded it was the "environmentally preferable alternative" in pest control programs when examined against other alternatives (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/ea/downloads/eis-gen-pbw-ff.pdf (3.4 MB). 

All products should be assessed on their merits as well as potential risks and we should not dismiss potentially valuable tools that offer real solutions in developing countries just because they have been produced by genetic modification, when many exotic biocontrol agents are being released without such burdens. In fact we should look to the well established biocontrol regulatory regimes as a template for guidance on how to use genetically modified/engineered insects. 

Camilla Beech
Regulatory Manager
Oxitec Ltd
71, Milton Park
Abingdon
Oxfordshire 
OX14 4RX, 
United Kingdom
Direct Tel: +44 (0)1235 433549 
Office: +44 (0) 1235 832393
Mobile: +44 (0)7833 666218/ (0)7811 486410
www.oxitec.com 
e-mail: Camilla.Beech (at) oxitec.com

References:

- Harris, A.F., McKemey, A.R., Nimmo, D., Curtis, Z., Black, I., Morgan, S.A., Neira Oviedo, M., Lacroix, R., Naish, N., Morrison, N., Amandine C., Stevenson, J., Scaife, S., Dafa'alla, T., Fu, G., Phillips, C., Miles, A., Raduan, N., Kelly, N., Beech, C., Donnelly, C.A., Petrie, W.D., and Alphey, L. (2012) Successful suppression of a field mosquito population by release of engineered male mosquitoes.  Nature Biotech., 30:828-830
- Lacroix R, McKemey AR, Raduan N, Kwee Wee L, Hong Ming W, et al. 2012. Open field release of genetically engineered sterile male Aedes aegypti in Malaysia. PLoS ONE 7(8): e42771. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042771 

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information on this FAO Biotechnology Forum, see http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/]

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