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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. 

GHTC sent letters to the House and Senate Subcommittees on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS); Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS); House Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs (NSRP); and Senate Subcommittee on Defense, urging these subcommittees to sustain and protect global health research and development funding in the fiscal year 2027 (FY27) budget.

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa is developing a vaccine for hantavirus, the virus behind a worrying outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Hantavirus is typically spread by rodents, and transmission between humans is very rare. There is no specific treatment of vaccine for hantavirus, which, as seen in the current outbreak, can be deadly. The researchers are using an innovative method called insilication to make the vaccine thermally stable, aiming to reduce the high resource and economic costs of meeting the cold chain and storage requirements that are associated with many vaccines. Moderna’s mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine outperformed conventional flu shots in a late-stage international trial of more than 40,000 adults aged 50 and older. The US Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing the vaccine after rejecting the initial application and is expected to make a decision by August 5. If approved, the vaccine would be the first mRNA seasonal flu shut in the United States. mRNA vaccines can be produced much more quickly than conventional flu shots, which could enable public health authorities to wait longer before choosing which flu strains to target, giving them more time to gather up-to-date data about circulating strains before flu season begins. A research team has discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which HIV-1 can infect resting cells, challenging previous assumptions and raising new possibilities for the development of improved treatments. For HIV to infect immune cells, it must deliver its genetic material into the cell’s nucleus, which is surrounded by a protective structure—how the virus has broken through the barrier has long puzzled scientists. Another obstacle to an HIV cure has been the latent reservoir of resting immune cells that house dormant virus, which cannot be cleared by treatment. The researchers found that when the virus spreads between immune cells, it triggers a signal that unlocks this protective gateway around the nucleus, allowing the virus to enter. They also found that this process does not require the immune cell to be activated, meaning that the reservoir can be established and maintained while cells are resting, upending long-standing assumptions and unlocking new avenues toward the development of a treatment that can destroy the virus and target the latent reservoir. 

A new US National Institutes of Health-funded study conducted in seven high tuberculosis (TB)-burden countries found that a new and improved near point-of-care TB test platform was highly accurate, effective, and scaleable. Pluslife Biotech’s MiniDock MTB test platform is battery operated, low-cost, provides results in 30 minutes, and can be used with tongue swabs in addition to sputum samples, which certain groups, including babies and people living with HIV, cannot produce. The new test is well-suited for low-resource, smaller, or more rural health clinics, which may not have access to current resource-intensive, expensive molecular testing options. The University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India have signed a license agreement to support the development, large-scale manufacturing, and potential future commercialization of the malaria vaccine candidate R78C for use in clinical settings. R78C combines two Plasmodium falciparum blood-stage antigens, designed to target the malaria parasite at multiple points in its lifecycle, offering longer and more effective protection. This new license, which builds on a long-standing collaboration between the partners on malaria vaccine work, will initially help accelerate the candidate into clinical evaluation. The Serum Institute of India’s global manufacturing capabilities will also help ensure that resulting successful malaria vaccines can be manufactured at scale and deployed affordably to malaria-endemic countries. The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and Novartis recently announced that the World Health Organization (WHO) has prequalified Coartem® Baby, the first and only antimalarial drug developed specifically for newborns and young infants weighing between 2 and 5 kilograms. This treatment will help address a long-standing gap in malaria care for this group, who are often treated with antimalarial formulations intended for use in older children, which can increase the risk of toxicity or underdosing. The prequalification designation enables countries and global procurers to start purchasing and deploying the treatment in malaria-endemic countries; Novartis is making the treatment available on a largely nonprofit basis in malaria-endemic regions.