Last week, SC Johnson; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and the US Department of State announced a new agreement to accelerate access to an innovative malaria vector control tool in high-burden countries. This marks the second such partnership between the State Department, the Global Fund, and a US company to expand global access to new products under the department’s global health strategy, after one with Gilead for lenacapavir for HIV prevention. This initiative will scale up the SC Johnson Guardian™ spatial repellant tool, a small mesh fabric sealed inside a pouch that is hung indoors, releasing an active ingredient that repels mosquitoes for up to a year. The tool was recommended by the World Health Organization last year, the first new category of vector control products to be recommended in 25 years. The partners aim to reach 60 million people across ten-high burden countries with 30 million products over three years, with manufacturing based in Nairobi, Kenya.
A new observational study found that even with only moderate levels of malaria vaccine coverage achieved, the initial introduction of the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine in high-burden African countries has contributed to a significant reduction in deaths among children. Specifically, despite only moderate uptake of three doses and low uptake of the fourth, the vaccine was found to have saved the lives of one in eight eligible children in the first three African countries to offer the vaccine from 2019-2023, which represents a 13.2 percent reduction in death. These results add to the evidence supporting continued scale-up of RTS,S—one of two malaria vaccines now included in national immunization schedules in 25 sub-Saharan African countries—and underscore the promise of continued investment in developing new and improved malaria vaccines.
Nonprofit Caring Cross has shared an early copy of data showing that, in a small study, a single infusion of engineered immune cells suppressed HIV long term in several patients, offering proof-of-concept for a single-shot functional cure. The approach, adapted from cancer research, involves extracting immune cells from participants living with HIV, engineering the cells to carry molecules that simultaneously kill infected cells and prevent the immune cells from becoming infected, and injecting them back into participants. HIV is notoriously hard to control because the virus persists in hard-to-eliminate latent reservoirs, requiring lifelong ongoing treatment to suppress the virus. This research could pave the way for the development of a single, low-cost intervention that could sustain viral suppression without the need for regular therapy. The research, which is still in the very early stages, is scheduled to be presented at an upcoming scientific conference.