Research Roundup: Promising Ebola drug, Unique nasal COVID vaccines trial, New research into sandfly that spreads leishmaniasis

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 International Vaccine Institute (IVI) has initiated a technology transfer, first announced last year, of the simplified Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV-S) to Indian company Biological E. Limited. In the face of an unprecedented rise in cholera outbreaks around the world in recent years, the technology transfer aims to increase the volume of affordable cholera vaccines in the Indian and international markets. IVI is providing technical information, know-how, and materials to support clinical development and regulatory approvals of the vaccine. OCV-s is a simplified formulation of the Oral Cholera Vaccine that can lower production costs while increasing capacity for manufacturers.The Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute last week announced the launch of a Phase 3 trial evaluating a vaccine for tuberculosis (TB), which researchers hope could become the second licensed vaccine for TB in more than 100 years. The adjuvanted subunit vaccine M72/AS01E was originally developed by GSK, Aeras, and IAVI. The trial, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, is testing the vaccine’s ability to prevent latent TB from progressing to active pulmonary TB in adults and adolescents. If successful, the pivotal trial could lead to a new tool with the potential to transform TB control globally.A research team from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has identified drug candidates that demonstrate the potential to eliminate the HIV viral reservoir that cannot be expelled completely by existing antiretroviral drugs, preventing people who have undetectable viral load from being completely cured of HIV. The drug candidates, which are called proteolysis targeting chimeras, or PROTACs, can trigger the degradation of the viral protein that prevents the immune system from destroying infected cells by hiding signs of the virus on the surface of the cell. Through this method, the drugs show promise in reversing the ability of HIV to evade detection by the immune system. The PROTAC approach still has significant hurdles to go before it can be used in humans, including preclinical testing in animal models and medical chemistry optimization.

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 at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, researchers presented exciting results from two different HIV vaccine studies that they hope will lead to an effective vaccine that can provide long-term immunity against the virus and greatly reduce the almost million new HIV infections yearly. One study found that a modification to the simian version of HIV drove monkeys to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, and the other showed promising results in encouraging the immune system’s B cells to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies. Over the past four decades of HIV vaccine research, there have many failed and halted trials, thus, all current research into HIV vaccines in now in preclinical development, animal studies, or very early human trials. Nonetheless, HIV vaccine science has consistently driven innovation and science that benefits other infectious disease efforts and global health in general, such as mRNA vaccine technology. With maintained funding and global collaboration, researchers hope to see human trials for an HIV vaccine candidate resume as soon as the 2030s.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is providing up to $1 million in funding to Amplitude Therapeutics to test a new vaccine approach that could address some of the challenges associated with current mRNA vaccine designs and cut down vaccine development times in future pandemics to as little 100 days. The trans-amplifying mRNA vaccine approach could serve as an advantageous alternative to the currently used self-amplifying method and works by separating the RNA fragment that contains the genetic instructions for the body’s cells to make the antigen that induces the body's immune response and the fragment that teaches the body how to replicate more mRNA. The trans-amplifying approach simplifies production and saves time and resources by extending antigen supply and allowing for key components of the vaccine to be developed ahead of time, underlining its ability to speed vaccine development in future pandemics.The results from a large clinical study presented last week at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections demonstrated that the monthly dapivirine vaginal ring and daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis with tenofovir disoproxil fumarate and emtricitabine were safe HIV prevention methods among pregnant people, who are an estimated three times more likely to acquire HIV through sexual intercourse than similarly aged non-pregnant people. The study, which was carried out in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe by the Microbicide Trials Network, found that both methods were safe among cisgender women who started using one of them in their second trimester of pregnancy. These results fill data gaps for these two technologies, offering additional prevention options for this population.