"Inside a massive factory in the industrial district of Curitiba, Brazil, millions of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are breeding in a climate-controlled room filled with mesh cages. Every week, the facility produces more than 80 million mosquito eggs. At the heart of this effort is Luciano Moreira, a soft-spoken agricultural engineer and entomologist, who opened the factory in July as part of an effort to fight mosquito-borne illnesses in the country."
"Moreira's interest in mosquitoes started in the late 1990s, when he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of molecular entomologist Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, then at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. There, Moreira contributed to the development of the f irst mosquito genetically engineered to block malaria transmission. Several years later, he joined the lab of entomologist Scott O'Neill at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, as a visiting scholar. O'Neill's team had managed to infect A. aegypti"
A climate-controlled factory in Curitiba breeds millions of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and produces more than 80 million eggs weekly. Mosquitoes at the facility are infected with Wolbachia bacteria that curb transmission of harmful human pathogens. Offspring carrying Wolbachia are being released in Brazilian cities to help control dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases. Brazil's federal government has recognized Wolbachia releases as an official public-health measure, enabling nationwide adoption beyond small-scale research projects. Luciano Moreira led the factory effort and convinced political decision-makers to implement the technology. Moreira previously worked on the first genetically engineered mosquito to block malaria and collaborated with Scott O'Neill's team at Monash.
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