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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. Moderna has launched a phase 2/3 trial of its two-dose, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 6 months to less than 12 years, the company announced last week. The KidCOVE trial, conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, will enroll about 6,750 children in the United States and Canada. The first stage of the trial will test how participants respond to different dosing levels, followed by an interim analysis to determine appropriate dose levels, and the second stage of the trial will test the selected dose against placebo shots. In a separate, ongoing trial launched in December, Moderna is testing its vaccine in 3,000 children aged 12 to 17.The COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford reduces mild and serious forms of the disease, according to results from an interim analysis of a phase 3 trial in the United States, Chile, and Peru released Monday. The two-dose vaccine decreased symptomatic disease by 79 percent and severe disease and hospitalization by 100 percent. In its press release, AstraZeneca said the vaccine study identified no new safety concerns, and a specific review found no risk of blood clots—reports of which had led several European countries to halt rollout last week. Last Thursday, the European Medicines Agency announced the vaccine is “safe and effective,” noting its benefits outweigh the risk of potential adverse side effects, which appear to be extremely rare. AstraZeneca plans to request emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks.Researchers from Cleveland Clinic's Florida Research and Innovation Center (FRIC) have identified a potential new target for COVID-19 treatments, according to findings published in Nature Microbiology. The research shows that the coronavirus enzyme PLpro blocks the body’s immune response, suggesting that therapeutics inhibiting the enzyme could help treat COVID-19 infection. In a follow-up phase of the study, the FRIC research team will investigate whether blocking PLpro’s enzymatic function, or its interaction with receptor proteins that help govern immune defenses, would strengthen human immune response against the virus. If successful, PLpro could be a new target for future COVID-19 therapeutics.

At this week’s G20 Health Working Group meeting, G20 nations will be setting priorities that will have enormous implications for our ability to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and address other emerging and enduring health crises. This pandemic has shown with devastating clarity how vital the research and development (R&D) of health technologies is to confront global health challenges. But it has also laid bare the inadequacies of our current international structures and systems for supporting R&D and ensuring affordable, equitable global access to resulting tools. As G20 health leaders meet this Thursday and Friday, GHTC urges them to prioritize the following actions to bolster R&D to defeat COVID-19, mitigate its impacts, and combat other long-standing and emerging threats: Ensure the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) are fully funded. ACT-A is facing a US$22.1 billion shortfall in funding for 2021 to realize its mission to develop and equitably deliver COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, tests, and other tools worldwide. Alongside its ACT-A work, CEPI is pursuing a boldly transformative initiative to speed vaccine development for epidemic-risk diseases to just 100 days and bolster manufacturing, for which it requires $3.5 billion in replenishment funding. Unlock sustainable financing for global health innovation by making R&D investments eligible for financing from the World Bank and other international financial institutions and creating new financial mechanisms for pandemic preparedness. Unlocking this capital would support low- and middle-income countries in securing new resources to strengthen their research, laboratory, surveillance, and manufacturing capabilities. Incorporate R&D into existing multilateral policy frameworks to help countries assess and strengthen their R&D capabilities. G20 members should push for the inclusion of R&D capacity indicators within the implementation of the International Health Regulations and support integration of R&D into the Global Health Security Agenda framework. Prioritize investments in R&D to fight the silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To address the precariously thinning pipeline of antimicrobial innovations, G20 nations must directly invest in R&D for new tools to combat priority AMR threats including hospital-acquired infections and drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and HIV, as well as support collaborative international research efforts like the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, the AMR Action Fund, and the Global AMR R&D Hub. Sustain robust investments in R&D for long-standing global health challenges. The pandemic has eroded global progress against HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, and other poverty-related and neglected diseases and disrupted research efforts. To regain lost ground, G20 nations must recommit to making strong sustained R&D investments and incentivize public-private partnerships to advance end-to-end product development for affordable, accessible tools. It is GHTC’s hope that G20 leaders will seize this moment to radically reimagine a future where health R&D and health equity are enshrined as top political priorities for the world.  To view more details on GHTC’s recommendations for G20 leaders, click here. 

Prior to COVID-19, tuberculosis (TB), another airborne disease, was the world’s leading global infectious disease killer, claiming the lives of around 1.5 million people annually. Insufficient and inadequate tools and treatments, as well as the growth of drug resistance, have challenged global efforts to bring this epidemic to an end. But scientists hope that tide will turn as more new technologies and innovations advance to market. In recognition of #WorldTBDay, test your knowledge of innovations to #EndTB with GHTC’s quiz below: Loading... (function(i, s, o, g, r, a, m) { var ql = document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if (ql) { if (ql.length) { for (var k = 0; k

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. Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine has an overall efficacy of 89.7 percent, with 100 percent efficacy against severe disease, according to final results of its phase 3 trial in the United Kingdom. The results, released Thursday and not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, showed 96.4 efficacy against the original strain of the COVID-19 virus and 86.3 percent against the B.1.17 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom. The company also announced results from a phase 2b trial in South Africa, which showed 48.6 percent efficacy overall but maintained 100 percent efficacy against severe disease. Phase 3 trials in the United States and Mexico are ongoing. Novavax plans to apply for regulatory approvals around the world, including for use by the global vaccine initiative COVAX, to which Novavax pledged to provide 1.1 billion doses.An antibody cocktail developed by Eli Lilly decreased risk of hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 by 87 percent when compared to a placebo, the company said Wednesday. The antibody duo, a lower-dose combination of bamlanivimab and etesevimab, received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February based on previous trial data indicating a 70 percent reduction in hospitalizations and deaths using higher doses. The treatment showed complete protection against death in both phase 3 cohorts. Eli Lilly has a supply deal with United States for 100,000 doses of the treatment, set to be delivered by the end of the month, and the company has now partnered with Amgen to help produce up to 1 million doses of the cocktail by the end of the year. On Thursday, results from a long-term study in South Africa showed almost all patients who received a new treatment for highly drug-resistant tuberculosis remained clear of the disease two years after the trial. The six-month, all-oral regimen of bedaquiline, pretomanid, and linezolid (BPaL) treats highly drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis and shortens the treatment period from two years, with limited side effects. The new findings come from analysis of the Nix-TB trial, conducted by the TB Alliance of South Africa, which tested the BPaL regimen on 109 patients at three sites in the country. Preliminary trial results showed a 90 percent success rate after six months of treatment and six months of post-treatment follow-up, and according to the new data, only two patients had challenges by two years after the treatment.