Inside the Swiss lab protecting homes and health across the world
- Scientists at Syngenta’s Stein research site investigate ways to control diseases spread by mosquitos.
- Vector control research helps keep homes worldwide free from pests like cockroaches.
- Limiting the spread of infections like malaria helps keep people safe from serious illnesses.
- Scientists at Syngenta’s Stein research site investigate ways to control diseases spread by mosquitos.
- Vector control research helps keep homes worldwide free from pests like cockroaches.
- Limiting the spread of infections like malaria helps keep people safe from serious illnesses.
On the River Rhine, right on the Swiss German border, sits one of Syngenta’s most important research and development sites – Stein. Here, overlooked by the Black Forest, hundreds of the world’s leading scientists and researchers investigate new compounds to protect plants and keep them safe from dangerous diseases and destructive pests.
But on the site, scientists in one lab are taking on a different global challenge: preventing diseases spread between people by mosquitoes. This is the Syngenta Vector Control lab.
From agricultural innovation to the science of public health
Mark Hoppé is a Public Health entomologist and a team leader for Syngenta Professional Solutions. He’s been working in vector control – the science of limiting the spread of organisms that carry disease - for the last two decades with a particular focus on malaria.
“Mosquitoes cause seven hundred million infections a year passing on a host of different diseases. Just one of those – malaria – kills hundreds of thousands of people. Here we test compounds and develop formulations to control mosquitoes,” says Mark.
Over the last 20 years there have been some major breakthroughs in the fight against malaria with public health initiatives from bed nets and vaccines to indoor residual spraying (IRS) which protects people inside their homes by spraying walls with an insecticidal treatment.
“After feeding, mosquitoes don’t want to fly very far – when they land on a treated surface nearby, they are controlled, preventing the spread of infection,” says Mark.
Here the lab evaluates technologies used in crop protection to see if they are effective for vector control. However, it isn’t as simple as applying an already existing product to a new field. Even when the same molecule is used, the needs of vector control can differ significantly from agriculture – differences that bring unique technical challenges.
Mark explains: “Just one example of this is that in agriculture, farmers need their crop protection products to be absorbed into the plant to protect them. For malaria prevention it’s the opposite – here we need the active ingredient to stay on the surface of the wall so it can be absorbed by the mosquito when they land on it.”
On top of that, homes aren’t like crops which can be treated multiple times throughout a season. Rather, an IRS program might only treat a home once a year, meaning that the formulated product needs to remain stable and effective for months at a time, without breaking down or being absorbed into the bricks, plaster or even mud of the wall.
Known to his kids as "Mosquito Man," Syngenta expert Mark Hoppé is obsessed with stopping mosquitoes in their tracks. Watch how Syngenta labs develop novel formulations to fight vector-borne diseases worldwide.
For more than 50 years Syngenta and its legacy companies have taken a leading role in developing solutions to fight against vector-borne diseases and last year introduced a new product, SOVRENTA®15 WP that utilizes its breakthrough PLINAZOLIN® technology, an innovative insecticide, for reliable indoor residual spraying.
These new technologies are essential. After all, just as with pests in a farmer’s field, mosquitoes can develop resistance to the standard control methods. Mark emphasizes the necessity of taking an integrated approach.
“In the field, farmers don’t rely on a single control method – it's the same for controlling malaria. Nets, IRS and other public health initiatives are all important tools that are most effective when used in combination.”
But successful solutions require a lot of testing. And so, the Syngenta Vector Control team have their own insectary as well as labs to develop highly effective technologies.
Syngenta scientists study the deadly Anopheles mosquito.
Syngenta scientists study the deadly Anopheles mosquito.
In a secure laboratory sit rows of boxes, covered in a fine white mesh. Inside, buzzing away are tens of thousands of Anopheles mosquitos, carefully monitored by researchers. The team works on mosquitoes throughout their entire lifecycle, from the first larva to full grown adults.
The mosquito life cycle takes around two to three weeks. First, eggs are laid on the water surface before hatching into small larva that feed and grow in the water then pupate before the full-grown adults emerge.
Given the speed of this life cycle and the fact that female mosquitos can lay up to 300 eggs at a time, it starts to become clear just how quickly diseases like malaria can spread.
The Vector Control Lab breed tens of thousands of mosquitos from larva to full grown adults. They are kept in a secure laboratory where researchers investigate potential new control options.
The Vector Control Lab breed tens of thousands of mosquitos from larva to full grown adults. They are kept in a secure laboratory where researchers investigate potential new control options.
From there, they are taken through to the labs for testing so the team can evaluate the best ways to control them, as well as testing promising compounds to identify if they have the efficacy and longevity to be effective in the field.
“This kind of public health work has a huge impact, reducing infections and helping keep people around the world safe from serious illness,” says Mark.
Keeping cockroaches away from homes
But it isn’t just mosquitos that the team are working on. The lab is also home to thousands of cockroaches – unwelcome visitors to people’s homes and a key target for fresh research.
Products need to be effective across different geographies and with different types of pests, so the lab has cockroaches from across the world including death’s head cockroaches from the USA and even a box of large Madagascan hissing cockroaches.
Picking one up as it hisses, Mark says with a smile: “At this point, I like to think of them as six-legged hamsters.”
But these insects still carry diseases with them: “With cockroaches they are a pest whose behaviour has changed because of society – more of us are ordering things on the internet which arrive at our home in cardboard boxes, and the corrugations in the boxes can be an ideal home for the tiny cockroach nymphs,” says Mark.
Their behaviour also makes them difficult to get rid of – adults might be caught if spotted but even if one is eliminated, the small nymphs, hidden away, can always reappear later.
This is why baits, like Syngenta’s Advion™ cockroach gel bait, are so useful. Mark says: “An adult will eat the bait and then go back to where the young are. Cockroaches are necrophagous so the young will eat the dead adults. It's more targeted and more efficient.”
Mark Hoppé holding one of the lab's Madagascan hissing cockroaches.
Mark Hoppé holding one of the lab's Madagascan hissing cockroaches.
The Stein site – helping crops and keeping people healthier
The labs and greenhouses at Stein are constant hives of activity, looking for new innovations.
But, as the work of Mark and the Vector Control team shows, the impact of these breakthroughs isn’t just evident in a farmer's field but in helping to take on some of the biggest challenges in public health.
Whether the goal is safeguarding a wheat field from disease, helping farmers achieve a higher yield with a lower impact on the environment, or reducing the risk of mosquito-borne disease, the ambition is the same: innovative science that helps people live healthier, safer and more secure lives.
