Miss Saffron Mackey

Saffron is a Research Technician in the Functional Genetics group of the Vector Biology Department at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). Her work focuses on investigating insecticide resistance in the main malaria vector, anopheles gambiae, and looking at gene drive technology as a potential method of vector control.

In 2024 Saffron completed a MRes in Tropical Health and Infectious Disease Research at LSTM, where she looked at using blood metabolism as a novel target for both insecticides and genetic control strategies. Prior to this she completed my BSc in Tropical Disease Biology from the University of Liverpool and LSTM, where her research project used clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats to study mutations linked to insecticide resistance.

Saffron’s research focuses on using functional genetics to study insecticide resistance in anopheles mosquitoes and developing new vector control methods, including gene drive.

Recently she has been exploring blood metabolism – specifically the tyrosine metabolism pathway – as a potential target for gene drive. This pathway is essential for mosquito reproduction but is understudied for vector control.

She has also been using insecticide assays to explore possible new insecticides, as well as life history assays to understand the role of specific genes in the tyrosine metabolism pathway using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats induced knock outs. She is also helping to develop a gene drive targeting this pathway, with the goal of suppressing anopheles populations and contributing to malaria reduction efforts.