Breakthroughs Blog: Malaria

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. Biotech companies Afrigen Biologics and Univercells on Tuesday announced a collaboration to pave the way for the development of the first African-owned COVID-19 vaccine through open-access intellectual property. The companies will focus on the development of a novel mRNA vaccine, using intellectual property from partners, with an emphasis on tackling two major challenges that have hindered COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Africa and other low- and middle-income countries: cold or super-cold chain requirements and a lack of local cost-effective production. The collaboration will be hosted in Cape Town, South Africa, by Afrigen, which also hosts the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub, and the new agreement will build on expertise developed using the hub.At last week’s Kigali Summit on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) each pledged to make significant new investments in research and development (R&D) for neglected diseases. Novartis committed $250 million over a period of five years to support work on malaria, Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, dengue fever, and cryptosporidiosis. The funding announcement was made as part of Novartis’ endorsement of the Kigali Declaration, a commitment to ending NTDs. GSK’s pledge—$1 billion over ten years—will be used to accelerate R&D of infectious diseases that disproportionately affect lower-income countries. This research will focus on new and disruptive vaccines and medicines to prevent and treat malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, NTDs, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).Development of new antibacterial treatments is inadequate to address the escalating threat of antibiotic resistance, according to an annual WHO pipeline report released Thursday. The report, which assesses antibacterial drugs in preclinical and clinical development, describes the pipeline as stagnant and far from meeting global needs. Since 2017, just 12 antibiotics have been approved, 10 of which belong to existing classes with established mechanisms of AMR—demonstrating a major gap in discovery of antibacterial treatments, especially innovative treatments. Urgent, concerted investments in R&D by governments and the private sector are needed to accelerate and expand the antibiotic pipeline, according to WHO, especially for products that can make an impact in low-resource settings, which are most affected by AMR.

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. COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy appears to decrease newborns’ risk of infection with the virus, according to study results published Wednesday. The study, conducted in Norway, tracked 9,739 babies whose mothers received a second or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna while pregnant and 11,904 babies whose mothers were not vaccinated before or during pregnancy. COVID-19 infection was rare overall among the newborns, but risk of a positive PCR test during the first four months of life was 71 percent lower when the delta variant was dominant and 33 percent lower when omicron was dominant in babies whose mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy compared to babies whose mothers were unvaccinated. The findings could be in part a result of antibodies acquired from breastfeeding, according to a lead researcher, or due to vaccinated mothers being less likely to get COVID-19 and infect their infants.A team of researchers based at the University of Melbourne has discovered a new compound that could offer effective treatment against drug-resistant malaria. The compound, ML901, inhibits the malaria parasite by attacking the protein synthesis machinery from the inside and causing it to self-destruct, effectively making the parasite the agent of its own demise. During studies in both human blood cultures and an animal model, ML901 was able to kill malaria parasites that resisted currently used drugs and showed rapid and prolonged action. Based on the findings, the research team is now prepared to pursue the development of new antimalarial drug candidates.Individuals with HIV were able to achieve a lengthy period of virus suppression without antiretroviral therapy (ART) after receiving infusions of two broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), according to research conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and partners. The research, published in Nature last week, indicates combination bNAb therapy can be highly effective in suppressing HIV in the absence of ART for extended periods, provided that antibody-resistant virus is not already present when individuals begin treatment. The authors suggest that infrequent infusions of combination bNAbs could offer a future alternative to daily ART for people living with HIV, though larger studies are needed to confirm the findings.

Malaria is one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases. Thanks to international efforts to develop and scale up prevention tools and treatments, significant gains have been made over the past few decades in fighting this dangerous disease. But challenges, such as growing drug and insecticide resistance and disruptions from COVID-19, have hampered control efforts. Unfortunately, in 2020, both malaria cases and deaths increased significantly from the prior year—indicating progress against the disease has stalled and underscoring the need for continued research and development of new tools.In recognition of #WorldMalariaDay, test your knowledge of this deadly disease and the innovations being advanced to #EndMalaria:

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. Moderna plans to ask the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in children aged 6 months to 6 years, the company announced Wednesday. Interim data from two clinical trials among children under 6 showed the vaccine generated similar immune responses to those seen in adults aged 18 to 25 who received two doses of Moderna’s adult formulation. The two-dose vaccine was, however, less effective at preventing symptomatic infection in the young children than seen in previous trials for older age groups. The decreased efficacy was on par with what would be expected of a vaccine in adults against the omicron variant, which predominated during the trial, according to Moderna. There were no severe cases, hospitalizations, or deaths in the studies.Pfizer will supply nearly 4 million courses of its oral COVID-19 treatment, Paxlovid, to UNICEF for use in 95 low- and middle-income countries. The two-drug treatment, which has emergency use authorization in the United States and is currently under assessment by the World Health Organization, will be allocated among the target countries depending on demand, clinical recommendation, and necessary approvals. Paxlovid was shown to be 89 percent effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization or death due to COVID-19 in clinical trials, and early studies indicate the treatment has some efficacy against the newer BA.2 variant that has caused cases to increase across Europe and Asia. Pfizer expects to be able to begin supplying orders to UNICEF in April and continue throughout 2022.A new “mosquito-grounding” insecticide that causes mosquitos’ wings to spasm and wither could bolster the fight against malaria, according to trial results published in The Lancet last week. In a two-year trial in Tanzania, lacing bednets with a combination of the new substance—chlorfenapyr—and a widely used insecticide—pyrethroid—significantly reduced malaria prevalence, including in regions where insecticide resistance is widespread. Insecticide-treated bednets have been central in efforts to reduce the spread of malaria, but rising insecticide resistance among mosquitos has hampered progress. Chlorfenapyr is the first new insecticide to be deemed safe and effective in about 40 years, and an ongoing study in Benin will continue to evaluate whether the substance reduces malaria transmission.