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WASHINGTON, DC—The ticking time bomb of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), an infection that is easy to transmit and almost impossible to cure, has been defused. Today, a new drug, pretomanid, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in a treatment for XDR-TB. Amazingly, it’s the first time that a treatment for XDR-TB infections has been recognized for actually working—no other treatment has demonstrated any consistent effectiveness. Up until now, people with XDR-TB had to suffer through up to two years or more of toxic treatment that worked only one third of the time. Today’s news means that treatment time is drastically reduced—to six months—while the effectiveness of treatment is significantly improved. We welcome this approval as it shows the real-world impact of US government investment in finding new cures and vaccines for the world’s deadliest diseases. The developer of pretomanid, the nonprofit organization TB Alliance, could not have succeeded in advancing this breakthrough without support from the American people, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). As federal spending for the coming fiscal year continues to be debated in Congress, we hope that this breakthrough bolsters our commitment to fighting global diseases with investments in scientific research.CONTACT: Katy Lenard, klenard@burness.com, +1 301-280-5719

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 at Purdue University have created a device that can rapidly detect the bacterium which causes cholera in water. Unlike traditional tests, which require a well-equipped laboratory and three to five days to process results, this device acts as a portable “cholera detection lab” built around a smartphone. A water sample is placed in a single-use, disposable test kit which uses chemicals that make copies of the toxin gene in cholera bacteria in a process called amplification. If the water becomes more viscous, it signals that harmful bacteria has been identified and the imaging system on the smartphone will capture the results, which can be sent to researchers or charities who can address the water quality issue. The device is currently in early field testing. The nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) has acquired the rights from GSK to develop three experimental, single-dose vaccines for Marburg virus, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Zaire—the strain of the Ebola virus responsible for the yearlong outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Sabin will develop these vaccines in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center, whose scientists originally designed the vaccines which all use the same approach to induce immunity. Though the vaccines have not been tested in phase 3 trials, which would show their efficacy in preventing infection, a phase 2 trial conducted at the end of the West African Ebola outbreak showed that the Ebola Zaire vaccine produced an antibody response in most recipients that lasted up to a year. The largest-ever trial of a preventive Ebola vaccine in Uganda began last week, amid fears of the virus spreading from neighboring DRC. The two-year trial, which will test a two-dose Ebola candidate vaccine developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals of Johnson & Johnson, will involve 800 participants picked from core health workers and non-core personnel in the Mbarara district, located in the southwest of the country, and will assess the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in inducing an immune response to prevent the disease. The trial will be conducted by both Ugandan and international researchers and is sponsored by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Ebola has killed more than 1,800 people in the DRC during this latest outbreak, which began over a year ago.