Breakthroughs Blog: Diagnostics

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a group of infectious diseases that exert a crushing burden in vulnerable communities around the world. These diseases can blind, disable, and disfigure people, robbing them of health and opportunity and trapping them in poverty. While breakthroughs in recent years have brought new resources to the fight against NTDs, significant gaps remain in the arsenal of tools needed to control and eliminate these diseases. In recognition of World NTD Day on January 30, GHTC is testing our readers’ knowledge with nine questions about NTD innovation. See if you can beat our quiz below, and join the fight to #BeatNTDs and #EndTheNeglect. 

While we know that vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, devices, and vector control innovations are all vital tools in our global health toolbox, in this year of the World Health Assembly resolution on strengthening diagnostics capacity, GHTC wanted to shine a special spotlight on diagnostics as an often underrecognized driver of global health progress. Diagnostics play a critical role for patients, health care providers, and decision-makers, and innovating and improving access to diagnostics are necessary to achieving universal health coverage. The below presentation, which was shared during GHTC's Innovating for Impact Awards reception on December 12, features an explainer of types of diagnostics tests and a glossary of terms, as well as key quotes and facts that demonstrate the critical role of diagnostics.

At GHTC, we get to read stories every day about incredible innovations in global health. Most of the technologies we see are inventive, some are revolutionary, and a few are so unusual, one might think they were ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel. Now, we’re testing how well you know these global health technologies with our annual Halloween game: the TRICK or TREATment quiz.For each question, we will present a description of a global health technology. Choose TREATment if you believe this innovation exists. Choose TRICK if you think we are trying to pull one over on you and, instead, the product is still in development or is just a figment of our imagination. 

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email. Last week, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded Kephera Diagnostics two Small Business Innovative Research grants, totaling $5.7 million, for the development and testing of immunoassays for Lyme disease and Chagas disease. The company’s Lyme disease immunoassay could simplify diagnosis by eliminating the need to perform one of the two steps now used in the screening and confirmatory testing process. Kephera’s immunoassay for Chagas disease is designed to monitor treatment response in patients, as current drugs vary in efficacy in adults with chronic infections. It is being developed both for laboratory use and use in the field.A phase 1 trial evaluating a novel preventive HIV vaccine candidate, VIR-1388, has begun enrollment in the United States and South Africa. VIR-1388 is designed to prompt the immune system to produce T cells that can recognize and signal an immune response to prevent the virus from establishing chronic infection. It delivers vaccine material using a cytomegalovirus (CMV) vector, whose discovery and development was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). Because CMV, while harmless, remains detectable in the body for life, researchers hope this vector will help the body retain the vaccine material for a longer period of time, overcoming the waning immunity seen with other candidate vaccines. The trial is sponsored by Vir Biotechnology with support from NIAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Last week saw the launch of a third phase 1 clinical trial of the ChAdOx1 vaccine candidate for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). If eventually approved, the vaccine would be a game-changing tool against the viral illness, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments, and which is recognized by the World Health Organization as a priority pathogen with epidemic potential, especially in light of new cases reported this year. The University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute started developing the vaccine for MERS before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the research for ChAdOx1, which was put on pause during the pandemic, enabled the rapid development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19.