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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 World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of interleukin-6 receptor blockers as a treatment for severe and critical COVID-19, making these only the second set of drugs it has deemed effective in treating the disease. The interleukin-6 blocking drugs, tocilizumab and sarilumab, showed efficacy in reducing deaths in data from more than 10,000 patients involved in 27 clinical trials. Tocilizumab, made by Roche under the brand name Actemra, and sarilumab, made by Regeneron and Sanofi under the brand name Kevzara, are monoclonal antibodies used to suppress overreactions of the immune system in patients with severe COVID-19. In its recommendation, WHO also emphasized a need for equitable access to the treatments, calling on manufacturers to reduce the drugs’ prices and make supplies available to low- and middle-income countries, especially where COVID-19 is surging. A chikungunya vaccine candidate developed by Valneva has received Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine, VLA1553, also received FDA Fast Track designation in December 2018 and European Medicines Agency PRIME designation in October 2020. Valneva’s phase 3 trial to evaluate immunogenicity and safety of VLA1553 at 28 days following immunization completed recruitment in April, and top-line data is expected in the summer. The Breakthrough Therapy Designation is meant to facilitate and expedite development and review of new drugs for serious or life-threatening conditions where preliminary clinical data demonstrates the drug may have substantial improvement for at least one endpoint over available therapies.Pfizer intends to seek FDA authorization for a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine in August, the company said Thursday, claiming another shot within 12 months could boost immunity and help combat virus variants. Early data from Pfizer’s booster study showed participants’ antibody levels jumped five- to ten-fold after a third dose, compared to their second dose months earlier. Research has also shown the current vaccine regimen offers strong protection against the delta variant, which is now spreading rapidly around the world and accounts for the majority of new US infections. On the same day as Pfizer’s announcement, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA issued a joint statement saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need a booster shot yet, and any decision on boosters would happen only when “the science demonstrates that they are needed.”

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.University of Cambridge scientists have identified 200 existing drugs as possible candidates to repurpose against COVID-19 and validated two of them in early tests—the antimalarial therapy proguanil and rheumatoid arthritis medication sulfasalazine. In the study, both drugs safely inhibited the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in monkey and human cell lines. Both are well established and well tolerated for other human diseases and will likely be rapidly advanced into clinical trials to test whether they can prevent or treat COVID-19. The Cambridge research, which mapped a network of human proteins induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection, identified 476 key proteins most relevant in viral replication and screened approved drugs against those proteins, finding 200 drugs, 40 of which are already in COVID-19 clinical trials and another 30 of which have previously been proposed as potential candidates against the disease.A malaria vaccine candidate that pairs a shot of the live parasite that causes the disease with a dose of infection-fighting drugs showed promise in early clinical trials, researchers reported in Nature last week. The live parasite vaccine and drug combination showed 87.5 percent efficacy in a small group of healthy adult participants. The study, conducted at the National Institutes of Health, gave 44 healthy people in the United States three intravenous doses of the vaccine spaced about a month apart, followed by one of two antimalarial drugs—pyrimethamine or chloroquine—two or three days after the shot to weaken and eliminate the parasite. A phase 2 clinical trial of the vaccine is now underway in Mali, a malaria-endemic country.The CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine appears to be safe and induce an antibody response among children and adolescents ages 3 to 17, according to phase 1/2 clinical trial data. The vaccine, manufactured by Sinovac, has recently been approved for emergency use in China for children over the age of 3. The trial results evaluated the vaccine among healthy children and adolescents in Zanhuang County, China, finding 96 percent of participants who received two doses of the vaccine developed antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Most adverse reactions were mild or moderate, with pain at the injection site the most commonly reported symptom. Researchers noted that the number of participants was small and concentrated and recognized a need for larger studies in other regions, as well as for data evaluating long-term safety and immune responses.