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Breakthroughs Blog

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Breakthroughs brings you stories of bright ideas and bold innovations in global health.

PATH/Georgina Goodwin
March 27, 2023

Research Roundup: Marburg vaccine trials, Fungal vaccine, and Bird flu shot development

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
Read time:
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.The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced efforts to fast-track the testing of vaccines and therapeutics for Marburg following the recent outbreaks in Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea. Those trials should get underway soon, said WHO officials, as four or five of the 28 potential candidates already have doses ready. In the meantime, contact tracing, isolation, and supportive care are being used to prevent transmission in the countries. A lack of laboratory capacity in Equatorial Guinea has so far prevented the timely identification of cases, but the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is working to provide technical support, as well as build infrastructure and capacity to improve testing, which will be important in upcoming trials.Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned about the recent, rapid spread of the drug-resistant fungus Candida auris, or C. auris, in health care facilities and highlighted the serious risk the fungus poses to immunocompromised individuals. C. auris is resistant to typical antifungal treatments, and developing a vaccine for the fungus would likely take many years. There are currently no approved vaccines for any form of fungal infections. One vaccine candidate, being developed with support from the US National Institutes of Health, is designed to be cross-protective against several fungal pathogens, potentially including C. auris, although a phase 1 clinical trial is over a year away.Executives at three of the world’s leading flu vaccine manufacturers—GSK, Moderna, and CSL Sequiris— have said that they are preparing the capacity to develop hundreds of millions of avian flu shots within months if a new strain of avian flu jumps to humans. The companies are already or will soon begin testing sample human vaccines that match the subtype currently circulating among birds and mammals. Sanofi has also expressed its readiness to begin production, alongside its stock of existing H5N1 vaccines. However, there is concern about how to ensure equitable global access to such vaccines in the case of an outbreak, given a substantial portion of doses are already reserved for wealthy countries through preexisting preparedness contracts.

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PATH/Georgina Goodwin
March 27, 2023

Research Roundup: Marburg vaccine trials, Fungal vaccine, and Bird flu shot development

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
Read time:
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.The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced efforts to fast-track the testing of vaccines and therapeutics for Marburg following the recent outbreaks in Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea. Those trials should get underway soon, said WHO officials, as four or five of the 28 potential candidates already have doses ready. In the meantime, contact tracing, isolation, and supportive care are being used to prevent transmission in the countries. A lack of laboratory capacity in Equatorial Guinea has so far prevented the timely identification of cases, but the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is working to provide technical support, as well as build infrastructure and capacity to improve testing, which will be important in upcoming trials.Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned about the recent, rapid spread of the drug-resistant fungus Candida auris, or C. auris, in health care facilities and highlighted the serious risk the fungus poses to immunocompromised individuals. C. auris is resistant to typical antifungal treatments, and developing a vaccine for the fungus would likely take many years. There are currently no approved vaccines for any form of fungal infections. One vaccine candidate, being developed with support from the US National Institutes of Health, is designed to be cross-protective against several fungal pathogens, potentially including C. auris, although a phase 1 clinical trial is over a year away.Executives at three of the world’s leading flu vaccine manufacturers—GSK, Moderna, and CSL Sequiris— have said that they are preparing the capacity to develop hundreds of millions of avian flu shots within months if a new strain of avian flu jumps to humans. The companies are already or will soon begin testing sample human vaccines that match the subtype currently circulating among birds and mammals. Sanofi has also expressed its readiness to begin production, alongside its stock of existing H5N1 vaccines. However, there is concern about how to ensure equitable global access to such vaccines in the case of an outbreak, given a substantial portion of doses are already reserved for wealthy countries through preexisting preparedness contracts.
PATH/Georgina Goodwin
March 23, 2023

Quiz: Innovating to end TB

How much do you know about innovations to combat tuberculosis (TB)? Take our World TB Day quiz to find out.

Written by Anna Kovacevich / GHTC
Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
Read time:
Prior to COVID-19, tuberculosis (TB)—another airborne disease—was the world’s leading global infectious disease killer, claiming the lives of around 1.5 million people annually. Insufficient and inadequate tools and treatments, and growing drug resistance, have challenged global efforts to bring the TB epidemic to an end, and more recently, disruptions from COVID-19 have reversed years of TB progress. In 2020, global TB deaths increased for the first time in more than a decade, and about 1 million fewer people were tested and treated for TB compared to 2019. The number of new cases and deaths increased further in 2021. At the same time, global funding for TB diagnostic, treatment, and prevention services fell by $500 million from 2019 to 2020, and total funding for TB research and development dropped by $33 million.Scientists hope the tide can be turned as new technologies and innovations advance to market—but to achieve that, more investment is urgently needed to boost resources and reverse setbacks.In recognition of World TB Day, test your knowledge of innovations to end TB with GHTC’s quiz below:
PATH
March 20, 2023

Research Roundup: Dengue treatment trials, Insecticide-treated bednets, Mobile mRNA vaccine labs

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
Read time:
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 research team from Johnson & Johnson has refined and tested a new dengue treatment with promising results in animal studies. The treatment was tested for prevention and treatment in mice and for prevention in monkeys. No treatment exists for dengue, which has four different strains, and the two available vaccines for the disease have not yet been approved universally, highlighting the great potential of this new treatment in reducing disease burden. Further research is needed to find out whether the treatment could produce vulnerability to more serious reinfection and to test the compound in humans.Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of bednets treated with new insecticides in areas where there is mosquito resistance to pyrethroid, which has historically been used to treat bednets. WHO now recommends combining pyrethroid with an additional chemical—either the insect growth regulator pyriproxyfen or the insecticide chlorfenapyr. The recommendations are based on large-scale trials done by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Tanzania and Benin. Researchers say the rollout of the new bednets could happen as early as the next few months and should take place in concert with the development of a comprehensive long-term plan to manage and prevent future resistance.Mobile vaccine production units, made by German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, recently arrived in Rwanda as part of a larger initiative to boost mRNA vaccine manufacturing on the African continent. The facility, which will hopefully start producing doses in around a year, will be able to manufacture up to 100 million mRNA vaccines a year for African Union countries, as well as potentially innovate treatments for diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, which are among the leading causes of death on the continent. There are further deliveries of these mobile production units planned for South Africa and Senegal.
PATH/Gabe Bienczycki
March 13, 2023

Research Roundup: African clinical trials platform, New TB vaccine, Coronavirus surveillance

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

Written by Hannah Sachs-Wetstone / GHTC
Read time:
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.PANTHER, a newly launched pan-African platform for emergency research and preparedness, aims to address the lack of clinical trials carried out on the continent, despite it facing a disproportionate amount of the global disease burden. The researchers behind the initiative see the platform as a way to ensure essential data is captured in clinical trials during active outbreaks of existing or newly emerging diseases, especially following the recent Marburg and Sudan ebolavirus outbreaks. PANTHER hopes to prepare around 80 percent of the groundwork for trials before an outbreak by targeting at-risk spots, creating a network of researchers and health care providers, and proactively engaging funders so that when an outbreak is identified, this foundation can be quickly leveraged to adapt trials to local contexts and specific disease characteristics.Last week, researchers announced promising results from a phase 1 clinical trial, supported by the US National Institutes of Health, looking at a temperature-stable tuberculosis (TB) vaccine that can be freeze-dried and safely stored at higher temperatures for months. The shot, given to 45 healthy adults in the study, was found safe, well-tolerated, and elicited measurable responses in the body. If further testing of the vaccine proves successful, the shot could be a clear alternative to the bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine—the only licensed vaccine for TB, which is more sensitive and cannot be frozen— and break down barriers to vaccine distribution in low-income and low-resource settings around the world.A new paper found that more than 10 percent of people in rural Myanmar have been exposed to a diverse range of sarbecoviruses, a group of coronaviruses that includes Sars and Sars-Cov-2. Researchers also emphasized that the paper confirmed the risk of direct spillover from bats, especially in remote, rural areas. While there were no signs of human-to-human transmission of these viruses, the findings highlight the ongoing occurrence of spillovers and the need for surveillance of both disease outbreaks and rural areas with high wildlife-human interface, as well as ensuring strong biosecurity laboratory measures are in place.