Research Roundup: Single-dose Ebola drug, mosquito birth control, and new TB treatment

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. According to clinical trial results recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, tafenoquine—a new single-dose oral antimalarial drug developed by Medicines for Malaria Venture and GlaxoSmithKline—significantly lowered the risk of the recurrence of malaria caused by the Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) species of the parasite. P. vivax malaria affects approximately 7.5 million people annually and often lies dormant in the liver even after initial treatment, causing debilitating recurring malaria episodes. This single-dose treatment could significantly boost cure rates, as adherence to the standard two-week drug course is difficult in low-resource regions in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and parts of North Africa where this form of malaria is endemic. Based on the results of this clinical trial, the US Food and Drug Administration has already approved tafenoquine for use in July 2018, followed by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration in September 2018. A new, long-acting contraceptive designed to be self-administered by women using microneedle skin patch technology could provide a valuable new family planning option, particularly for women in low-resource settings where access to healthcare can be limited. When the patch is applied to the skin, microscopic needles break off and remain under the surface of the skin where biodegradable polymers slowly release the contraceptive drug, levonorgestrel. In animal testing, an experimental microneedle patch provided a therapeutic level of contraceptive hormone for more than a month with a single application. Experimental patches designed for humans have been developed but not yet tested. If the microneedle contraceptive patch does eventually reach the market, it could become the first self-administered, long-acting contraceptive that does not require a conventional needle injection.A new rapid DNA and RNA sequencing device could offer potential to instantly diagnose viruses such as Ebola or Zika at the point of care during an outbreak. Researchers at the French agricultural research institute CIRAD have found a way to use a device known as the Oxford Nanopore MinION device, which can sequence DNA and RNA in real time, to identify plant viruses—and potentially animal and human viruses too. The CIRAD team was able to test and validate the use of this portable device to identify plant viruses quickly and early in the infection process—avoiding the time-consuming and potentially dangerous task of transferring contaminated samples to a lab. The device’s ability to rapidly and accurately detect a virus in plants is a step forward in providing real-time detection of viruses with a mobile device, which would be especially useful in low-resource settings and remote areas. This device has the potential to help public health officials manage outbreaks by reducing the time between taking a sample and diagnosing it as carrying a particular virus—enabling the detection of potential outbreaks at an earlier stage than was previously possible.

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.Scientists from the Fraunhofer Society have developed a first-of-its kind technology that uses electron beams to produce inactivated vaccines quickly and reproducibly without the use of chemicals. Inactivated vaccines contain pathogens that have been killed so they are no longer harmful to patients. Often these pathogens are killed using chemicals, such as diluted formaldehyde. This process is time consuming and can have a negative impact on both the structure of the pathogen and the reproducibility of the vaccine. The new technique uses electrons to fragment the DNA of the pathogens while maintaining their external structure, which is key to triggering an effective immune response. It will likely be another two to four years before vaccines produced using electron beams can be tested in clinical trials. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation to Valneva’s chikungunya vaccine candidate, which will allow the product to receive expedited review by the agency given it holds potential to fill an unmet medical need. The company is expected to release phase 1 data for the vaccine candidate in the coming weeks. Currently, there are no approved treatments or vaccines for chikungunya‒a disease that causes debilitating joint pain‒though there are several candidate vaccines in clinical testing.The Marburg virus, a deadly cousin of Ebola, has been isolated in fruit bats in Sierra Leone, marking the first time the virus has been found in West Africa. According to two teams of scientists involved in this discovery, five bats caught in three health districts tested positive for the virus. Genetic testing revealed multiple strains of the virus in each bat, which suggests that the virus has circulated in West Africa for many years. This testing was done as part of a project funded by the US Agency for International Development, known as PREDICT, which aims to detect dangerous pathogens in animals and take steps to prevent them from crossing over into humans and triggering disease outbreaks. PREDICT takes a “one health” approach by uniting the work of medical doctors, veterinarians, and occasionally plant biologists to detect threats in other species.