Stefan Kappe sticks his left hand into a mosquito-filled Plexiglas box and watches the bugs feed furiously on his blood. Fortunately, they aren't injecting Kappe with the human malaria parasite, which infected roughly 207 million people worldwide in 2012 and killed some 627,000. Instead, the insects are part of an unconventional project to develop a malaria vaccine via lab-grown mosquitoes. In humid, dorm-size "swamp rooms" at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, shallow plastic tubs of wriggling mosquito larvae feast on bits of tropical fish food delivered by spice grinder. As they grow, the insects graduate into Chinese takeout containers; some of them eventually make it into breeding cages.
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