In a recent study<\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0Sci. Adv.\u00a0(2026, DOI: 10.1126\/sciadv.aec0269),\u00a0Zheng and his colleagues revealed a vaccination strategy that deploys vaccine-laced salt traps to attract and immunize bats and that leverages mosquitoes to deliver vaccines to these mammals. The team found that in laboratory settings, vaccinated bats developed neutralizing antibodies against Nipah and rabies viruses\u00a0<\/p>\n The concept is very novel, and very unorthodox, says Arinjay Banerjee, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan who wasn\u2019t involved in the work. \u201cBut to me, the real-world applications are a lot more challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers have previously tested intramuscular and oral vaccines<\/a> as well as gel-based vaccines<\/a> that are applied to bats\u2019 fur, muzzle, ears, and wings, and spread via social grooming<\/a> among bat colonies. But the logistics of using those vaccines in the wild and on larger scales \u201cis not so easy,\u201d Zheng says.<\/p>\n So, he thought \u201cmaybe we can modify the mosquito into a tool.\u201d His team sterilized Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and fed them blood mixed with live, attenuated, vesicular stomatitis virus\u2013based rabies and Nipah vaccines. The researchers thought mosquitoes were well suited for vaccine delivery because many bat species prey on the insects, which themselves feed on bat blood.<\/p>\n To mimic bats eating mosquitoes, Zheng and his colleagues mashed these vaccine-carrying mosquitoes into a soup, which they administered to rodents and insectivorous bats via pipettes. In a separate experiment, they also allowed vaccine-carrying mosquitoes to bite these animals.<\/p>\n In both approaches, the team found that mice and bats elicited an immune response postvaccination and remained protected when they were deliberately infected with the rabies virus. Hamsters, which are typically used for Nipah virus studies, showed a similar response. But the researchers couldn\u2019t perform a similar Nipah virus challenge in bats because doing so would require a higher-level biosafety lab.<\/p>\n Next, Zheng and his colleagues simulated field conditions using enclosures in which they exposed two insectivorous bat species\u2014caught from caves in suburban Beijing\u2014to vaccine-carrying mosquitoes. In similar enclosures, they orally vaccinated bats by placing saline traps\u2014a flat-bottom container filled with a mix of saline solution and the vaccine, as well as a humidification device that generates salt mist to attract the mammals. \u201cWhen they drink [the liquid], they will be vaccinated,\u201d Zheng says.<\/p>\n The saline traps may be particularly useful for fruit bats such as flying foxes that are the main reservoirs of Nipah virus and typically don\u2019t eat mosquitoes. The technique exploits the mineral-seeking behavior of fruit-eating bats, Zheng says.<\/p>\n The researchers found that inoculating bats via both mosquitoes and salt traps induced a strong protective immune response in bats that lacked any preexisting antibodies against Nipah and rabies viruses.<\/p>\n But \u201cwe don\u2019t know how long this response will live,\u201d Banerjee says. Thus, he adds, \u201chow often do you have to vaccinate bats?\u201d (In this study, Zheng and his colleagues measured the postvaccination neutralizing antibody levels in mice for 6 months and in bats for up to 42 days.)<\/p>\n Banerjee also wonders whether there\u2019s enough interaction between bats and mosquitoes in the wild to vaccinate sizable bat populations. Such knowledge is important because the vaccine strategies used by Zheng\u2019s team don\u2019t allow for bat-to-bat vaccine dissemination.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the researchers are thinking about which mosquito species are best-suited for vaccine delivery, depending on the various environments and bat colonies they may want to target. Banerjee says that though there are still many unknowns and Zheng\u2019s strategy is \u201ccertainly not close\u201d to use in the wild, the study \u201cdoes open up the idea of whether we can broadly vaccinate wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel Streicker, a viral ecologist at the University of Glasgow who wasn\u2019t involved in the project, thinks Zheng and his colleagues\u2019 approach is innovative but says there\u2019s a larger ethical question involved.<\/p>\n \u201cMosquitoes bite many things other than bats, including humans,\u201d he says. Even if there were no off-target safety concerns when these vaccine-carrying mosquitoes bite humans and other animals\u2014which the researchers will need to demonstrate\u2014\u201cthere’s still an issue that you’re removing individual consent,\u201d he says. For Streiker, such interventions merit demonstrated demand, \u201cboth in terms of the burden of the disease\u201d and \u201cdemonstrated inability of conventional methods to manage those diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n
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