# An immune system for the city: a new paradigm for control of urban disease vectors

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2022 · $657,812

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 The difficulties faced by a community when trying to control a dangerous insect are in many ways
analogous to those faced by the body when attacked by a pathogen. Through evolution mammals have
developed a complex and interlocking defense against invaders—an immune system well-honed to detect and
control infections. The adaptive immune system relies on communication among autonomous entities to
recognize pathogens and recruit effector cells; it includes a combination of systemic and local responses to
remove pathogens; and, most amazingly, tightly regulates these responses and creates memory to improve
them in the future. The aim of the proposed collaborative interdisciplinary and international research is to
develop a new paradigm for the control of dangerous insects patterned after the adaptive immune system. The
project will adapt aspects of the immune system from the scale of cells to that of landscapes, and test the new
approach against a conventional one using a randomized cluster design in an ongoing Chagas disease vector
control program in the city of Arequipa, Peru. Based on over a decade of work on this topic and in this region,
the team will now field this trial, using a framework from Implementation Science—the Reach, Effectiveness,
Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework— to ensure rigor and reproducibility. The
trial and subsequent evaluations will bridge participatory research and computational sciences to develop
sustainable systems for the surveillance and control of Chagas disease vectors, as well as disease agents in
general.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10436196
- **Project number:** 5R01AI146129-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Michael Z Levy
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $657,812
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-01 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10436196

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10436196, An immune system for the city: a new paradigm for control of urban disease vectors (5R01AI146129-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10436196. Licensed CC0.

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