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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.  Researchers have reported that a once-a-month birth control pill that gradually releases a contraceptive drug worked as designed in a key test in animals. The experimental device is small and star-shaped with six arms that each hold a certain dose of medication. The device is folded inside an ordinary-sized pill capsule. Once swallowed, its coating is dissolved by stomach acid, allowing the star to unfold. As the medication slowly dissolves out of each of the arms, the device breaks down until it can safely pass through the digestive system. Experts caution that more safety testing is required before the device can be tested in women and question whether the device dissolves in the same way in different people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is investing US$13 million for further development of the device, which could improve family planning options for women in developing countries.The first field trial of a new typhoid vaccine that can be used in young children has shown it protected 81.6 percent of recipients. The trial, which took place in Nepal and included children as young as nine months old, provides evidence of the vaccine’s potential level of impact for preventing typhoid, a bacterial infection often spread through contaminated water which leaves people sick for weeks or months. As some strains, particularly in South Asia, become resistant to antibiotics, prevention of the disease has become particularly important. There are two other typhoid vaccines, but one comes in a capsule too large for young children to swallow, and the second is an injection that doesn’t work in children under the age of two. This new vaccine, known as TCV, has already been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, and further two-year field tests are also underway in Bangladesh and Africa to gauge its effectiveness in other regions. Typhoid affects 11 million people every year and kills approximately 117,000. Last week, WHO released its 2019 World Malaria Report, which notes that the fight against the mosquito-borne disease has stalled. According to the report, malaria still infects millions of people every year, killing more than 400,000 which are mostly children in Africa. The report also found that an estimated 11 million women in sub-Saharan Africa—29 percent of all pregnancies—were infected with malaria in 2018, leading to nearly 900,000 children being born with a low birthweight. Additionally, the report cites that funding for the fight against malaria is broadly flat and calls on donor nations and governments in countries affected by the disease to step up the fight, noting that global political commitment and investment is critical to sustaining progress.

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.  Indian generic drug manufacturer Cipla and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative have developed a new, palatable pediatric formulation of HIV medicines priced at US$1 day, which experts say could save the lives of thousands of children each year. The drug, called Quadrimune, contains four HIV drugs—ritonavir, lopinavir, abacavir and lamivudine—and comes in strawberry-flavored granules the size of grains of sugar that can be mixed with milk or sprinkled on baby cereal. The granules are also coated with a polymer that doesn’t melt until it hits the stomach, eliminating the need for cold transport or storage of the drug, which can be inconsistently available in rural areas, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Quadrimune is still under review by the US Food and Drug Administration and, if approved, will likely lead to rapid certification by the World Health Organization. Each year, approximately 80,000 babies and toddlers die of AIDS in part because their medicines come in hard pills or bitter syrups that are very difficult for small children to swallow or keep down.Final data from a landmark clinical trial of four Ebola therapies in the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo show two of the drugs dramatically reduce the risk of dying from the disease, especially in those who started treatment quickly after the onset of their illness. Findings of the PALM trial show that a monoclonal antibody cocktail called REGN-EB3, made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and a single monoclonal antibody developed by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases called mAb114 led to a survival rate of about 65 percent in treated patients compared to 33 percent in the overall outbreak. The other two products tested in the trial, an antibody product called ZMapp and the antiviral drug remdesivir made by Gilead Sciences, did not perform as well, saving only half the patients who were treated with one of those two therapies. The PALM trial began November of last year but ended early in August of this year because an interim analysis showed REGN-EB3 and mAb114 were statistically better than ZMapp and remdesivir.When babies are born with HIV, starting treatment within hours to days is better than waiting a few weeks or months, which is the norm in many countries. The findings from a small study in Botswana, funded by the US National Institutes of Health, show that very early treatment limits how HIV takes root in a newborn’s body, shrinking the “reservoir” of the virus that hides out waiting to rebound in case the children stop taking their medication. The study also demonstrated that the earliest-treated children had more normal functioning of some key parts of their immune system. These findings could influence care in regions hard hit by the epidemic and offer clues as scientists pursue a cure. Though it has become routine practice to give pregnant women a cocktail of anti-HIV drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus, it is estimated that 300 to 500 infants are infected every day in sub-Saharan Africa.