Research Roundup: a two-drug HIV treatment found equally effective as three drugs, experimental Ebola treatments show promise in lab study, and WHO upgrades list of essential diagnostic tests

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. An experiment on two islands near the southern Chinese province of Guangdong successfully reduced the female Asian Tiger Mosquito population—a highly invasive species that is the main source of bites and disease transmission—by up to 94 percent, reducing the number of reported human bites by 97 percent. In the study, female mosquitoes were sterilized with low level radiation and males infected with Wolbachia bacteria to inhibit reproduction. Both the female and male mosquitoes were then released during the peak breeding seasons in 2016 and 2017—resulting in a near-eradication of the entire female mosquito population on both islands. Given there are no effective vaccines or treatments for many mosquito-transmitted diseases, controlling the insect’s population is one of the most effective control methods, according to the International Journal of Science. A new project is being launched by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to test whether using biometric data as part of medical records can help boost vaccination rates among children. The trial in Bangladesh and Tanzania will fingerprint up to 20,000 children between the ages of one and five in existing health projects, using biometric data to track their vaccinations and link them to computer medical records that will replace paper-based records. Simprints, a UK-based nonprofit specializing in biotechnology in the field of international development, will manage the fingerprint collection effort. Simprints’ technology has already been fine-tuned to work with fingerprints from individuals in poor and rural communities, who are more likely to have worn, scarred, or burned fingertips. Japanese company NEC Technologies is also partnering on the project to provide image processing and matching algorithms to complement Simprints’ scanning hardware and apps. The US$3 million project is due to begin later this year and conclude in 2020. Johnson & Johnson will test an experimental HIV vaccine—a mosaic-based preventative immunization that targets multiple strains of the virus—in the United States and Europe sometime this year. The company is also conducting a phase 2 clinical trial for the vaccine in Africa involving 2,600 women in five southern African countries. Initial results from the African trial are expected in 2021. This trial comes amid other recent advancements in HIV and AIDS research. In April, Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline majority-owned ViiV Healthcare filed a new drug application with the US Food and Drug Administration for its once-a-month injection treatment for HIV, which in late-stage trials was shown to be as effective in controlling HIV as daily pills.

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. To help tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) announced its new “5 BY 25” strategy to mobilize global stakeholders to raise the €500 million needed to develop five new antibiotic treatments by 2025. According to a GARDP press release, drug-resistant infections cause at least 700,000 deaths per year globally and addressing the growing threat of AMR will be key to achieving universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. With this new strategy, GARDP aims to develop and make accessible five new treatments that will focus on the priority pathogens identified by the World Health Organization, along with current unmet needs for diseases and key populations. In a promising step towards an HIV and AIDS cure, researchers from Temple University and the University of Nebraska have successfully eliminated HIV from the DNA of infected mice using genome editing technology combined with a slow-release virus suppression drug. Researchers administered a treatment called LASER ART, or long-acting, slow-effective release antiretroviral therapy to suppress HIV cells from replicating in mice engineered to produce human T cells susceptible to the virus. The research team deployed the drug across several weeks to target tissue in the spleen, bone marrow, and brain where latent HIV reservoirs are likely to occur. The researchers then used CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing tool, to eliminate the remaining infective cells from the subject’s DNA. By the end of the study, researchers had successfully eliminated HIV from nine out of 23 mice. Researchers are now working on a version of the study with primates. If their methods continue to be successful, clinical trials could follow as soon as next summer. Heads of state from the world’s largest economies committed to advance global health priorities at this year’s G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan. In the G20 Osaka Leaders’ Declaration, they included commitments to move towards universal health coverage by bolstering primary health care and access to medicines, promote healthy aging by preventing noncommunicable diseases, improve emergency preparedness and response, provide support for the countries affected by the current Ebola outbreak, and identify better models for antimicrobial drug research and development. Participants in the summit, described as the “premier forum for international economic cooperation,” includes leaders from 19 countries and the European Union, as well as guest countries and international organizations.