Research Roundup: Antibiotic fund investment, Poliovirus detected in Canada, China and data-sharing

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.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) last week announced US$2 million in funding for American pharmaceutical company, Tiba Biotech, which has developed promising RNA technology that could make the development of mRNA vaccines targeting Disease X (a pathogen with pandemic-potential that has yet to be identified) cheaper, more effective, and more tolerable. While mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 have successfully been administered globally, limitations including side effects and ultra-cool cold chain storage requirements hinder their effectiveness and accessibility. This first round of funding will support the development of a vaccine candidate for Japanese encephalitis. If that candidate is successful, this technology could lead to the development of a variety of Disease X vaccine candidates to be included in CEPI’s library of vaccines as part of the 100-day plan to speed up vaccine development and rollout after the emergence of a disease threat.Last week, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Africa Region declared the end of the recent outbreak of Sudan ebolavirus. WHO is expected to convene Ebola experts to discuss how to move forward with the plans to trial three experimental vaccine candidates that target the Sudan strain responsible for the recent outbreak. The trial was aimed at ensuring both study groups received protection from a vaccine (one group after a time delay) and generating data about the potential of these candidates, which is much needed, as there are no approved vaccines targeting Sudan ebolavirus. Finding a new strategy for testing the vaccine candidates will be challenging because the Sudan ebolavirus is rare and with limited cases, and therefore it would be difficult to obtain enough data to prove safety and efficacy, especially for all three candidates. One potential path for continuing the trial is testing efficacy on non-human primates and then more extensive testing of safety and immune response in healthy human volunteers.Last week, the Respiratory Virus & Microbiome Initiative was launched, in collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency and funded by the Wellcome Sanger Institute. The initiative will track the evolution of a variety of respiratory pathogens including SARS-CoV-to improve viral monitoring in the UK and enhance the country’s ability to quickly identify the emergence of new viruses. There is additional hope that this work will ultimately generate much-needed knowledge about the viral families behind common diseases, as well as spur the development of vaccines and therapeutics for these viruses. This initiative comes after the COVID-19 pandemic led to viral sequencing efforts around the world that helped guide responses and detect new variants and led to the development of diagnostics and vaccines.

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.The World Health Organization (WHO) recently added Indian company Hetero’s generic version of Paxlovid (Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral) to its prequalification list. Hetero also announced a licensing agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool to manufacture and sell the generic version in low- and middle-income countries. WHO’s inclusion will hopefully improve access for the drug, which the agency has strongly recommended for the treatment of high-risk patients with mild and moderate COVID-19, but which has been largely inaccessible to patients in low- and middle-income countries.Recent findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that initial results from two phase 2 clinical trials showed that two vaccines (Ad26.ZEBOV (Ad26) followed by MVA-BN-Filo (MVA) 56 days later and rVSVΔG-ZEBOV-GP (rVSV)) given with or without a booster dose 56 days later) against the Zaire strain of Ebola virus are safe and well-tolerated in adults and children. Both vaccines produced antibody responses as soon as two weeks after administration of the first dose that lasted for at least a year. As part of the PREVAC study in West Africa, these trials aim to assess the safety and efficacy of different experimental vaccine regimens for Ebola Zaire vaccines in order to reduce the high mortality associated with Zaire outbreaks.An innovative, new vaccine for HIV developed by the Scripps Research Institute in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and the US Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, among others, has demonstrated promising results in its first immunogenicity trial in humans. In response to HIV exposure, the vaccine, called eOD-GT8, is designed to induce a type of broadly neutralizing antibodies that can block a specific part of the virus that is needed for it to enter certain cells. While extensive further research and many further challenges remain, the recent results do demonstrate the potential of a complex and innovative approach.