Anna-bella Failloux PhD

Failloux did her PhD on population genetics of mosquito vectors at the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences at Montpellier (France). In French Polynesia, at the Institut Malardé, she made her first move into medical entomology by studying the adaptation of the vector Aedes polynesiensis to local populations of the parasite Wuchereria bancrofti. In 1994, she joined the Institut Pasteur in Paris where she developed genetic markers of mosquitoes; based on a population genetic approach, she proposed a reconstruction of the migration history of Aedes aegypti.
Since 2004, she have extended her field of expertise by developing projects on interactions between different arboviruses (chikungunya, dengue, Rift Valley fever, West-Nile, Yellow fever) and their mosquito vectors. Her main interest is to decipher the factors leading to the viral emergence by analysing in depth the vectorial system at the level of vector competence. Her laboratory has participated in deciphering the role of the invasive mosquito Aedes albopictus in the worldwide expansion of chikungunya. They are now working on the causes of the expansion of Zika virus in the Americas. She is now head of the Arboviruses and Insect Vectors Unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.