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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.  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.

Faces of Innovation—a new GHTC project that features scientists on the front lines of research and development on new global health tools and technologies—profiles Hannah Wu, who we met at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Conference, who is working to develop vaccines against the neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis at Brown University.My Name: Hannah WuWhere I work: Brown University Medical School in Providence, Rhode IslandI’m funded by: NIHMy research: We do research on neglected tropical diseases, for malaria and schistosomiasis…I’ve been working on schistosomiasis for a long time. I am lucky enough I can not only work in the lab, but also go to the field to see people. Even though schistosomiasis is more neglected than malaria, there are people in the world suffering from this disease. It’s caused by a trematoda—this is a worm. If we have a vaccine for it, that might be much better to cure the disease or to prevent the disease. So that’s what we are working at. We look at immune mechanisms from the population, and we are trying to find vaccine candidates. For the shistosomisis species, that I am specifically working on…it is also a one health strategy that we should use….We hope that we will have more funding to do other experiments and research on this vaccine, to be available in the livestock.For parasitic diseases, animals are a very important reservoir host. Some people are in touch with animals every day, in their daily life. So we are not only making vaccines for the humans, we can actually make vaccines for, in my case in schistosomiasis, for water buffalo which account for 70 to 90 percent of transmission. So that’s the concept of one health.Motivation: When I was in graduate school, I was not very clear what I wanted to do, but I think I was lucky enough, I got to see the people who had the disease…Because of their everyday life, they have to be in contact with the pathogen, so they cannot really avoid to have the disease, and they don’t have other means….Research has a curiosity I always like. And I was curious about finding new things…but if at the same time I can…contribute to this world by finding a vaccine to help people, that would be great. So that motivates me.Why federal support is critical: We are human beings. We’re not isolated…We care about other people, so that’s one basic reason we can do this research for the world, to improve human health. And I really believe that everyone deserves an opportunity to get health care and to live a more healthy life.When I’m not in the lab: I am involved with my church a lot. Through the church I work with young people. I tell them science is about curiosity. We have the privilege to do science, so we should do real science for real people. We’re not doing science just for the sake of science, we’re doing science for the betterment of human life.