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. On Friday, IAVI announced a €1 million investment from the Dutch government to further clinical evaluation of the organization’s investigational vaccine candidate for Sudan virus disease, a severe disease with potentially long-term health consequences, for which there are no vaccines or specific treatments. It is important to continue advancing the vaccine’s development in between outbreaks, coordinating with partners to generate key data, accelerate and improve manufacturing for the later stages of development and production, and ensure that a trial can begin promptly following the identification of a new outbreak. IAVI’s vaccine was tested in a trial during Uganda’s Sudan virus outbreak earlier this year and previously demonstrated promising results in animal models and a Phase 1 clinical trial in the United States.Researchers at the University of Texas and Moderna recently announced that in a preclinical trial in rodents, their mRNA vaccine candidate provided full protection against Marburg disease, a deadly disease closely related to Ebola, for which there are currently no licensed vaccines or treatments. Marburg has caused several outbreaks in sub-Saharan Africa, including one in Tanzania earlier this year, and the frequency of outbreaks has increased in recent years, as behavioral shifts offer more opportunities for the virus to spill over from fruit bats to humans. If the vaccine proves successful in future human trials, it could help play a key role in curbing the spread of future outbreaks.Last week, Novartis announced that the first malaria treatment for babies and small children who weigh less than 10 pounds has been approved by Swiss authorities, offering a new tool in the fight against malaria, particularly to help reduce the high rate of malaria deaths in young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Coartem Baby, developed by Novartis and the Medicines for Malaria Venture, offers significant improvement over the previous option of treating these babies and young children with versions of malaria drugs formulated for older children, which raises the risk of toxicity and overdose. Novartis plans to introduce the drug on a largely not-for-profit basis, and it could be rolled out in African countries within weeks, with the eight countries that participated in clinical trials of the drug expected to be among the first to receive it.

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, BioVersys AG https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/partnership-aims-foster-development-drug-non-tb-mycobacteria announced a new agreement with Shionogi to jointly develop its novel drug for treating non-tuberculosis (TB) mycobacteria, which affects approximately 250,000 people per year, primarily in North America and Asia. Shionogi will provide $6.3 million as an upfront investment for the development of the drug candidate, BV500, through clinical studies and licensing. BioVersys has stated that the candidate has the potential to become a best-in-class therapeutic for non-TB mycobacteria infections, which are currently treated with a lengthy and complex regimen.Scientists at King’s College London have developed a new class of antifungal compounds that could lead to a promising new tool against Candida auris, a dangerous fungal pathogen and a growing global threat. The researchers modified an existing class of antifungal drugs called azoles (which can lose their effectiveness as C. auris becomes resistant to them) to be more impervious to resistance, an approach that has demonstrated promise in lab and preclinical studies. If the new antifungals continue to succeed in further preclinical studies, this research could pave the way for a new, first-in-class antifungal that continues to work in the face of resistance, helping reduce mortality and limit the spread of resistant strains of bacteria.A research team from the University of California, Riverside has made a significant advance in our basic understanding of the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite, a step toward the development of new and improved drugs for malaria. The researchers identified two key proteins within the parasite’s cells that control gene expression and used advanced genetic tools to reduce the expression of these proteins, which led to the death of the parasite, verifying their essential role and potential as a drug target. Crucially, these proteins also have no human counterparts. These findings help pinpoint essential targets for developing future drugs that are effective and have minimal side effects.

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 Wednesday, Gilead announced that its twice-yearly injectable drug for HIV prevention has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, the first and only such shot for HIV prevention. The drug, lenacapavir, which is already used to treat HIV in certain populations, was found to dramatically reduce the risk of infection, providing near total protection among cisgender men and women, transgender men and women, and nonbinary people in clinical trials. The twice-a-year injection offers a significant improvement over current HIV prevention options that require a daily pill or every two-month injections, helping improve uptake and adherence by providing a more discreet, private, and less cumbersome alternative. Pricing and access plans for the United States and the rest of the world will determine the scale of lenacapavir’s impact on the broader HIV epidemic.Researchers from Cornell University have found that the antibiotic rifampin, which is already widely used, is 99.9 percent effective against Salmonella Typhi, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever, which a growing threat due to antibiotic resistance. The researchers found that S. Typhi is still highly susceptible to the antibiotic and that rifampin-resistant typhoid is extremely unlikely to emerge, despite concern due to the previous emergence of rifampin-resistant tuberculosis cases. The researchers found that rifampin may also be effective against other life-threatening diseases like bacterial pneumonia and meningitis.Newly published research found that a simple, affordable device made with strips of paper was more effective than other commonly used testing methods at detecting malaria in asymptomatic people in Ghana. Malaria testing, particularly at the point of care, is essential to malaria control in endemic areas, especially as increased uptake of the new preventive malaria vaccine lowers natural immunity, raising the need for widespread surveillance. The new test is highly sensitive, offers results in about 30 minutes, and can detect even a low density of parasites in the blood, catching malaria before a patient is sick.

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, the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) announced that a landmark clinical trial evaluating antibiotic combination treatment options for newborns with sepsis has been expanded to include hospitals across nine countries in Africa and Asia. Neonatal sepsis affects up to three million babies a year globally, a crisis that has been exacerbated by increasing numbers of antibiotic-resistant cases. The NeoSep1 trial is the first time that researchers will test whether new combinations of older antibiotics are safe and effective against treating newborns with sepsis compared to commonly used antibiotic regimens. The trial aims to provide critical data to help identify new treatments that could reduce the number of deaths and expand access to treatment.A new animal study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that H5N1 avian influenza is capable of spreading through the air, a finding that raises further concern about the ability of the virus, which continues its worrying spread among cattle populations, to cause a future pandemic. The researchers used a sample of the virus extracted from a dairy worker to infect a group of ferrets (the “gold standard” comparative animal population in flu research) that were then placed in close proximity to healthy ferrets and observed for three weeks. Three of that latter group contracted the virus without any direct physical contact with the infected ferrets, indicating that it can travel through the air, a finding that was confirmed with aerosol samples. The researchers emphasized that these findings underscore the need for continued surveillance of the ongoing outbreak.A team of researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research have been awarded £550,000 by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to develop an effective vaccine against Campylobacter jejuni, the most common bacterial cause of infectious diarrhea, in poultry. A poultry vaccine could help reduce the rising incidence of C. jejuni human infections, which are common in young children, causing stunted growth, lifelong deficiencies, and even death. The LSHTM team has found a promising approach for developing new cost-effective vaccines, which will be furthered with the new funding.