Breakthroughs Blog: Vaccines

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. A new study explores the novel use of artificial intelligence (AI) to screen for antimicrobial compound candidates that could be developed into new tuberculosis (TB) drug treatments, as the rise of drug-resistant strains of TB underscores the urgent need for new drug candidates. While discovering new TB drug candidates through traditional laboratory methods is laborious and time-consuming, sensitive machine learning is better and faster at helping interpret complicated images of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium, accelerating TB research capabilities and helping identify optimal candidate compounds for drug development.A COVID-19 nasal vaccine will enter a Phase 1 clinical trial conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States this spring. While COVID-19 cases have fallen dramatically since the height of the pandemic, the virus continues to circulate and cause severe illness and death. The nasal vaccine is designed to induce strong immunity in the nose and upper respiratory tract where the virus enters the body, aiming to not only reduce serious illness and death but also to stop transmission in the first place, which cannot be achieved through COVID-19 vaccines that are injected into the body. If proven successful, the technology could also be adopted for other common respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza, avian flu, and respiratory syncytial virus.Uganda recently launched a trial of IAVI’s experimental vaccine targeting the Sudan virus, which causes Ebola disease, following the identification of an outbreak in the country that has, so far, killed one person and infected two others. There are no currently approved vaccines for Sudan virus, although there is a vaccine for the Zaire strain of Ebola, highlighting the urgent need to generate data about vaccine candidates in the pipeline when outbreaks arise. Ugandan health authorities and research teams have rapidly jumped into action to prepare for the trial—2,160 doses of the trial vaccine and treatments arrived in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, over the weekend.

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 Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) announced that it is awarding $729,000 to Immunartes to develop a monoclonal antibody designed to prevent infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus, a leading cause of bloodstream infections that is responsible for more than 1 million deaths every year. Methicillin-resistant S. aureus, or MRSA, is of particular concern; it is one of the five leading contributors to deaths from antimicrobial resistance. The antibody is designed to neutralize the bacterium’s abilities to evade the immune system and, if successful, could be a promising solution to protect high-risk populations from infection.  A recent study has suggested it might be feasible to develop a vaccine offering lifelong protection against the Nipah virus, one of the world’s deadliest pathogens for which there are no vaccines. The research team tracked 25 survivors from the original 1998 outbreak in humans of the virus in southern Malaysia, finding that 72 percent of the survivors still had detectable levels of virus-neutralizing antibodies in their blood that could help protect them from being infected again. These results suggest that there is an enduring immune response to the virus, and they can be used to ensure that the candidate vaccines in development are targeting the correct parts of the virus, as well as to help develop monoclonal antibodies to treat Nipah infections. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is funding two promising vaccine candidates for Nipah virus, which have completed Phase 1 trials.A new European Union project called Comparative Signature of Marburg Virus Cell Activation as a Blueprint for the Identification of Antiviral Targets against Newly Emerging Viruses, or COMBINE, aims to better our understanding of how viruses enter cells to create tools that will improve our ability to combat emerging infectious diseases, as viral disease emergence is expected to accelerate in the coming years. The project will use the Marburg virus as a model to create a blueprint for identifying new targets for antiviral strategies. This blueprint will be used to establish the preclinical basis for the continued development of drugs and vaccines for Marburg and also to develop an innovative, experimental pipeline of countermeasures that can be rapidly applied to other emerging viruses, strengthening global readiness for future outbreaks of pathogens with pandemic potential.

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. Researchers at Penn State have discovered a new storage technique that can keep protein-based drugs and vaccines stable without requiring a cold chain. This method could make these products easier and cheaper to store and distribute, enabling greater access and generating cost savings. Currently, most biologic drugs and vaccines require temperature-controlled conditions throughout the supply chain, from production to administration to patients. Products preserved with this new method, which involves an oil-based solution and a molecule to coat the surface of the protein, were found in mice to be just as effective as refrigerated versions, and there were no signs of adverse health effects. The researchers are planning to test their method with additional proteins and are also working to secure patent rights and partner with pharmaceutical companies.The first patients have been enrolled in a pivotal clinical trial, supported by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa-CDC), the Institut National de la Recherche Biomédicale, and PANTHER, testing promising mpox therapeutic options. Mpox continues to pose a significant global health threat with no approved therapeutics specifically for the virus. The first drug being tested is brincidofovir, an antiviral from Emergent BioSolutions. The trial, which aims to bolster our ability to respond to mpox, also demonstrates Africa’s proactive role in partnering to tackle this ongoing challenge that has caused numerous outbreaks across the continent.The Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) and Debiopharm have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop Debio 1453, a novel compound representing a new antibiotic class that targets the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, as multidrug-resistant strains of N. gonorrhoeae emerging around the world make infections harder to treat. The partnership aims to develop Debio 1453 for regulatory approval and scale-up. The compound, with ongoing support from the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), previously demonstrated efficacy in preclinical studies against N. gonorrhoeae strains resistant to ceftriaxone, the last available recommended treatment globally, and other multidrug- resistant strains.

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, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had prequalified a point-of-care assay that can help guide the treatment of Plasmodium vivax malaria. The assay, developed by SD Biosensor and PATH, detects glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, which can lead to severe anemia in patients taking certain drugs to treat P. vivax malaria. This designation aims to improve access to the diagnostic in countries facing a high burden of malaria, enabling improved treatment for patients. The announcement arrives shortly after WHO prequalified two drugs for the treatment of P. vivax malaria last month.Researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center have developed the first nanobody-based inhibitors targeting the Ebola virus, a deadly pathogen with a fatality rate of about 50 percent. Nanobodies are small antibodies derived from animals that can penetrate areas of viruses and human tissues that larger antibodies cannot reach, providing protection against infection. The team, which previously developed nanobodies to target COVID-19, found promising results for their nanobodies in lab tests in Ebola-infected mice. If this research continues to be successful, it could pave the way for treatments not only for Ebola but also for other viruses in the same family, including Sudan ebolavirus and Marburg virus.Last week, the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) announced $2.6 million in funding to Clarametyx Biosciences to develop an anti-biofilm vaccine that could help prevent serious bacterial infections and mitigate the rise of antibiotic resistance. Specifically, the funding will support the further development of the company’s pathogen-agnostic vaccine candidate designed to prevent the formulation of bacterial biofilms, which are protective layers that bacteria use to shield themselves from antibiotics and the immune system, therefore allowing the body’s immune system to clear infections without the use of antibiotics. Hard-to-treat bacterial infections associated with biofilms are estimated to be responsible for up to 80 percent of bacterial infections and are known to contribute to the emergence of antibiotic resistance.