Breakthroughs Blog: Research Roundup

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.A research team from Johnson & Johnson has refined and tested a new dengue treatment with promising results in animal studies. The treatment was tested for prevention and treatment in mice and for prevention in monkeys. No treatment exists for dengue, which has four different strains, and the two available vaccines for the disease have not yet been approved universally, highlighting the great potential of this new treatment in reducing disease burden. Further research is needed to find out whether the treatment could produce vulnerability to more serious reinfection and to test the compound in humans.Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of bednets treated with new insecticides in areas where there is mosquito resistance to pyrethroid, which has historically been used to treat bednets. WHO now recommends combining pyrethroid with an additional chemical—either the insect growth regulator pyriproxyfen or the insecticide chlorfenapyr. The recommendations are based on large-scale trials done by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Tanzania and Benin. Researchers say the rollout of the new bednets could happen as early as the next few months and should take place in concert with the development of a comprehensive long-term plan to manage and prevent future resistance.Mobile vaccine production units, made by German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, recently arrived in Rwanda as part of a larger initiative to boost mRNA vaccine manufacturing on the African continent. The facility, which will hopefully start producing doses in around a year, will be able to manufacture up to 100 million mRNA vaccines a year for African Union countries, as well as potentially innovate treatments for diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, which are among the leading causes of death on the continent. There are further deliveries of these mobile production units planned for South Africa and Senegal.

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.PANTHER, a newly launched pan-African platform for emergency research and preparedness, aims to address the lack of clinical trials carried out on the continent, despite it facing a disproportionate amount of the global disease burden. The researchers behind the initiative see the platform as a way to ensure essential data is captured in clinical trials during active outbreaks of existing or newly emerging diseases, especially following the recent Marburg and Sudan ebolavirus outbreaks. PANTHER hopes to prepare around 80 percent of the groundwork for trials before an outbreak by targeting at-risk spots, creating a network of researchers and health care providers, and proactively engaging funders so that when an outbreak is identified, this foundation can be quickly leveraged to adapt trials to local contexts and specific disease characteristics.Last week, researchers announced promising results from a phase 1 clinical trial, supported by the US National Institutes of Health, looking at a temperature-stable tuberculosis (TB) vaccine that can be freeze-dried and safely stored at higher temperatures for months. The shot, given to 45 healthy adults in the study, was found safe, well-tolerated, and elicited measurable responses in the body. If further testing of the vaccine proves successful, the shot could be a clear alternative to the bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine—the only licensed vaccine for TB, which is more sensitive and cannot be frozen— and break down barriers to vaccine distribution in low-income and low-resource settings around the world.A new paper found that more than 10 percent of people in rural Myanmar have been exposed to a diverse range of sarbecoviruses, a group of coronaviruses that includes Sars and Sars-Cov-2. Researchers also emphasized that the paper confirmed the risk of direct spillover from bats, especially in remote, rural areas. While there were no signs of human-to-human transmission of these viruses, the findings highlight the ongoing occurrence of spillovers and the need for surveillance of both disease outbreaks and rural areas with high wildlife-human interface, as well as ensuring strong biosecurity laboratory measures are in place.

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, a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel recommended approval of two vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for adults 60 and older, one by Pfizer and one by GlaxoSmithKline. The agency could grant formal approval to the vaccines in the coming months, making them the first shots available against RSV, a disease responsible for significant deaths and hospitalizations among older adults and young children. Other vaccines, as well as monoclonal antibody treatments, also in the pipeline could additionally address the yearly burden of RSV.The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a warning about a rise in extensively drug-resistant cases of Shigella, especially in gay and bisexual men, in the United States and other countries. Shigella is a highly infectious bacterial infection that causes an inflammatory diarrheal condition and is spread when infected fecal matter enters the mouth or nose. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control also released an alert about possible cases among recent travelers. Doctors have faced major challenges in identifying viable alternative antibiotics to treat these cases, underlining the need for greater focus on the research and development of new antibiotics.This year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections saw a myriad of presentations on how best to expand global access to the cabotegravir, or CAB-LA, which is a long acting, injectable form of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) used to prevent HIV infection. CAB-LA joins oral PrEP and the recently approved dapivirine vaginal ring as a third safe and effective biomedical HIV prevention option, for the first time allowing people an authentic choice among products. However, to ensure access and availability of these products, there remains a need for additional research on the use of CAB-LA in certain patient populations, including among people who inject drugs, and further research on effective delivery methods to expand uptake of oral PrEP.

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 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it is slowing down Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) of new in vitro diagnostics for COVID-19 and Mpox. The agency will continue reviewing tests that have already been submitted for authorization and is expected to review only some additional tests from experienced developers that use innovative technological approaches, fill a gap in need, or demonstrate potential for wide public health benefits. Instead, the agency is encouraging most developers to submit their tests through different review processes. Despite the end of the national emergency declaration for the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, the 440 EUAs already granted will remain in effect as long as a separate agency-level EUA declaration determined by FDA continues.The World Health Organization (WHO) convened an emergency meeting of the Marburg virus vaccine consortium following the confirmation of the first-ever Marburg outbreak in Equatorial Guinea. During the meeting, five vaccine developers shared updates on their vaccine candidates for the disease. WHO is taking steps toward pursuing a real-time clinical trial for some of the candidates in alignment with the already-approved WHO clinical trial protocol for Marburg vaccines (which needs to be adapted to the country context) and in consultation with country officials. Sabin Vaccine Institute and Janssen’s candidates are in phase 1 clinical trials, while IAVI, Public Health Vaccines, and Auro Vaccines’ candidates are still in the pre-clinical development stage.A new study published last week found that a drug tested in mice could potentially be used as a birth control option for men. If successful in further trials, the drug would work as an on-demand contraceptive compared to other male contraceptives in the pipeline, like daily pills and gels, that researchers say are more complicated, time-consuming, and long-lasting. The drug works by preventing a molecular action from turning sperm “on” and activating them to pursue an egg. The researchers have founded a new company to move forward development of the drug but note it will likely be years before it is ready for testing in men.