News

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 Gates Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Wellcome announced the launch of the Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator, a new $50 million effort to boost the discovery of new antibiotics for gram-negative bacteria as the global threat of antimicrobial resistance continues to rise and there remains a lacking pipeline of novel antibiotics. The effort will function as a consortium, where multiple funders, research institutions, and industry partners share data and work collectively. Specifically, the project will focus on the discovery of direct-acting small-molecule antibiotics with broad-spectrum activity against Enterobacteriaceae, with Klebsiella species selected as the pathogen to be used in all proposed projects.An innovative, one-dose vaccine designed to offer high-level protection against malaria could transform global malaria efforts if proven effective in further studies. The Sanaria® PfSPZ-LARC2 Vaccine, designed by Sanaria and the Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Global Infectious Disease Research, uses advanced genetic engineering to delete two critical genes from the malaria parasite, ensuring that the parasite cannot advance to the blood stage and that the vaccine cannot cause or transmit disease. A pivotal study published last month demonstrated the remarkable potential of this approach, and clinical trials are scheduled for later this year.Last week, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced $5 million in funding to Ethris to support proof-of-concept research of spray-dried RNA vaccines that remain stable at room temperature and are suitable for mucosal delivery, an approach that could make these vaccines more accessible in low-resource settings and faster to roll out during outbreaks. The spray-drying technique is widely used for other health technologies and applying it to RNA vaccines helps minimize dependence on cold storage and complex delivery systems, especially in low-resource settings. Nasal delivery medicines are also well-established but used with RNA vaccines, this approach could also support their ability to remain stable and could help to offer mucosal immunity, which scientists believe can help reduce virus transmission.

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. On World Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) Day last week, the Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund announced that it is investing $12.7 million across eight projects to further the development of new technologies to help address NTDs and a range of other diseases. Specifically, the funding aims to further the development of new diagnostics and drugs for leishmaniasis, dengue, malaria, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Ebola, and Marburg, which is being led by various global product development partnerships and companies, including Medicines for Malaria Venture, PATH, and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative.   Newly published research led by the global collaborative endTB project found three new safe and effective drug regimens to treat tuberculosis (TB) resistant to rifampin, the most effective first-line TB antibiotic currently available. These findings help expand the toolkit of treatments for patients with drug-resistant TB in the face of rising resistance globally, offering regimens that are shorter, less toxic, and do not require injections compared to currently available options. The new regimens use two drugs, bedaquiline and delamanid, which have been in use for just over a decade, in combination with older medications. The trial, launched in 2017, involved hundreds of patients across seven countries, including populations often excluded from clinical trials: children, people infected with HIV or hepatitis C, and women who became pregnant while on treatment, ensuring these groups are not excluded from new treatment recommendations.A recently published study found that a prophylactic antibody-based immune therapy protected monkeys against severe disease caused by H5N1 avian influenza, as the outbreak in the United States continues to cause concern. The broadly neutralizing antibody targets a relatively stable region of the virus and is therefore less prone to losing its efficacy than antibodies targeting viral structures that are prone to mutate, helping to ensure that the protection conferred by the therapy can withstand the possible emergence of virus variants. If proven successful in further studies, the therapy could be used to prevent severe disease in at-risk populations and protect first responders and other health care providers in the early stages of an outbreak, and more broadly, this research helps set the stage for the development of medical countermeasures in the case of future outbreaks of influenza.

GHTC's statement on Agenda item 22: Climate and Health at the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Executive Board (EB) meeting.Climate change undermines global health security, and we applaud WHO’s resolution and new Global Action Plan on Climate and Health to address these risks. WHO’s drafted plan accounts for the important role that research will play in addressing climate change, including through regional research capacity-building. We especially applaud the document’s call for member states to promote research and development (R&D) to prevent, detect, treat, and respond to climate-sensitive diseases and health outcomes.  However, while the draft includes several strong R&D provisions, it mentions the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) only once. AMR is poised to cause 10 million annual deaths by 2050, and likely more with the growing influence of rising temperatures and evolving zoonotic diseases. Highlighting AMR as a global health threat inextricably linked to climate change and developing actionable guidance will be crucial for holistic and successful global action. With this in mind, we strongly suggest WHO and member states take the following actions: 1. WHO and member states should align the global action plan with last year's World Health Assembly resolution to accelerate global efforts to address antimicrobial resistance. In particular, we urge both WHO and member states to establish a global AMR laboratory network to strengthen worldwide AMR diagnostic capacity. 2. We urge WHO to work jointly with member states to strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate change through increased investments to develop new treatments that keep pace with resistance. We encourage member state investment in R&D to pioneer innovative health technologies, including prioritizing the expansion of access to health tools for those in vulnerable geographies and for the populations most impacted by AMR. 3. We encourage countries to accelerate the development and implementation of national action plans for AMR surveillance and response in addition to prioritizing a comprehensive One Health approach that appraises the needs of those most burdened by AMR. We call on WHO to continue supporting the development, revision, and implementation of AMR national action plans on a routine basis and facilitating regional- and cross-country-level collaboration and integration of national action plans.