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Research Roundup: Gates Foundation open access policy, Ebola vaccine market, World AIDS Day, and more

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PATH/Doune Porter

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

December 1, 2014 by Marissa Chmiola

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, GHTC’s communications officer Marissa Chmiola put together a list of ten global health advancements she’s thankful for this holiday season. The list includes advancements toward polio eradication, new Ebola treatments, vaccine candidates against hookworm, dengue fever, malaria, and much more.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a new policy that will require all research it funds to be published in a manner that is free for the public to access. Vox gives the lowdown on how this new policy could impact researchers. Since this Gates Foundation policy is in conflict with the practice of top scientific journals who charge access fees for their articles, Gates-funded scientists could have to stop publishing their articles in these top journals. On the other hand, it’s also possible that since the Gates Foundation funds so much research—spending US$900 million each year—these journals may have to change their policies or lose out on publishing potentially important research.

The New Yorker takes an in-depth look at how the growing global vaccine market is spurring companies to pursue development of an Ebola vaccine. According to the author, companies have realized that while vaccines can be more difficult to develop than prescription drugs, that difficulty can also be an asset because it is then harder for generic companies to produce copycat versions. While an Ebola vaccine likely won’t become a big money maker for pharmaceutical companies, with government and aid agencies offsetting some of the development costs, companies could break even on their investments and gain some positive publicity in the process.

This past week saw lots of great articles for World AIDS Day discussing progress on fighting HIV and AIDS. The International Partnership for Microbicides’ Chief Executive Officer Dr. Zeda Rosenberg discusses the need for new products such as microbicides which will help women protect themselves from HIV. AVAC’s Executive Director Mitchell Warren argues that more precision is needed in setting the prevention targets to meet UNAIDS five-year goal of reducing HIV infections by 500,000, including research into new prevention and treatment options.

About the author

Marissa ChmiolaGHTC

Marissa manages the development and implementation of the coalition’s communications activities, overseeing GHTC’s digital presence, media outreach, events, publications, and internal communication practices. She also manages GHTC's monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive learning and donor reporting...read more about this author

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PATH/Aaron Joel Santos
December 7, 2014

Research Roundup: a weakened HIV virus, SDGs, powdered measles vaccine, and more

Written by Marissa Chmiola / GHTC
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In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. According to a recent study out of Oxford University, rapid evolution of the HIV virus is slowing the virus’s ability to cause AIDS. In this study of 2,000 women in South Africa and Botswana, researchers found that the HIV virus had evolved to adapt to a specific gene known as HLA-B*57, which provides some protective effect against HIV, slowing the progress to AIDS. As the virus has adapted to reduce this protective effect in individuals, the virus has also reduced its ability to replicate, making it less virulent over all. Last Thursday, the UN Secretary-General launched his synthesis report for the sustainable development goals. In this report, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reaffirmed his support for the 17 goals and 160 targets proposed by the United Nations Open Working Group, despite concerns from some member states that the current list is too long. Of the 17 proposed goals, two contain targets related to the research and development of new technologies. Researchers are developing a powdered form of the measles vaccine which could make it easier and safer to deliver the vaccine to people in developing nations. The current FDA-approved measles vaccine is a live virus that has been freeze-dried into a powder, which requires reconstitution with water before being administered via syringe. The new vaccine under development is a powder that can be inhaled. This new formulation would eliminate the need for sterile water and needles, as well as cold-chain storage. A modified regimen of the HIV vaccine candidate RV144 was shown to be safe and capable of inducing a robust immune response in safety trials in South Africa. RV144—which was developed by the US and Thai military—showed early promise in clinical trials, but it was found to lose efficacy over time. This new regime is the same earlier RV144 vaccine regime with an added booster shot one year later. Further clinical trials of this new regime are set to begin in South Africa in early 2015.
PATH/Evelyn Hockstein
November 23, 2014

Research Roundup: Drug development costs, the price of priority review, new clinical trial requirements, and...

Written by Marissa Chmiola / GHTC
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In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. Last week we learned just how much pharmaceutical companies think a fast track review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could be worth. Gilead Sciences paid US$125 million via auction to purchase a priority review voucher from Knight Therapeutics. This voucher will allow Gilead to shave four months off of the FDA review time for a drug of its choice. The priority review voucher system was created in 2007 to incentivize development of drugs for neglected diseases. Bloomberg reports on a recent study out of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development which found it costs pharmaceutical companies on average $2.56 billion to bring a new drug to market. This is more than twice the cost it took 11 years ago. According to the study’s author, this higher cost results from larger and more complex clinical trials, as well as the number of drugs that fail in development. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last week pledged $5.7 million to test potential treatments for Ebola. The research being funded will examine the effectiveness of using blood plasma taken from Ebola survivors to treat those infected, as well the effectiveness of an experimental antiviral drug called brincidofovir. While it has been common practice for decades for doctors to use blood donations from Ebola survivors as a form of treatment, there has not yet been rigorous studies conducted to examine the effectiveness of this practice until now. The US Department of Health and Human Services last Wednesday unveiled new proposed reporting requirements or clinical researchers registering and submitting results to ClinicalTrials.gov. The most significant proposed change is that companies will be required to submit summary results from trials even if the product has not been approved or licensed for use in the United States.