Everyone deserves equal health outcomes

One by one, mosquitoes are captured by a handheld vacuum and released into a clear plastic box. After taking a moment to adjust to their new surroundings, the mosquitoes smell blood and swarm to the source.But instead of finding a creature to feast on, they buzz toward a vessel of scarlet blood flowing under a small square of clear synthetic skin and begin to feed.

This is not the stuff of science fiction, but a research partnership between Tulane and Rice universities to see if gelatin-like patches of fake skin – called hydrogels – are the future of studying how mosquitoes transmit deadly diseases and which repellents are most effective. Hydrogels eliminate the need for human and animal testing to answer such questions.