Research Roundup: Non-TB mycobacteria drug, New antifungal discovery, Malaria parasite research

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. Newly published research suggests that a patient-centered approach, combining novel diagnostic tools with targeted therapies, could be a game changer in tuberculosis (TB) treatment. Current TB treatment requires a complicated, months-long regimen that can be hard for patients to adhere to, leading to treatment failure and the emergence of drug-resistant TB strains. The researchers behind the new study suggest that new diagnostic tools that can better distinguish between patients with less and more severe forms of TB combined with, respectively, shorter or longer, more resource-intensive treatment courses could improve patient outcomes, reduce the burden on health systems, and limit the emergence of drug resistance.Last week, Bavarian Nordic announced the start of the first of two clinical trials testing the use of its Jynneos mpox/smallpox vaccine in vulnerable populations, including infants and children two years old and younger and pregnant or breastfeeding women. If the vaccine demonstrates safety and efficacy, the trial data could help support expanded access to the vaccine for the most vulnerable populations. The trial is being led by the University of Antwerp and the University of Kinshasa and supported financially by EDCTP3 and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.A recently published study found that a single-dose, long-lasting flu drug could provide protection for an entire flu season, offering longer and more effective protection than our current seasonal flu vaccines. The clinical trial followed 5,000 healthy adults for the entire duration of the most recent flu season, finding that the highest dose of the drug provided more than 76 percent protection compared with a placebo shot. The drug has also demonstrated efficacy against a wide variety of flu strains in a previous study in mice, compared to the season influenza vaccines, which are designed (prior to flu season based on expert assumptions) to protect against at least three of the seasonal strains that circulate each season and whose efficacy depends on how well they match the flu strains that end up circulating.