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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. In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. In mouse studies, scientists at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research have discovered a key step in the digestion process of hookworms that can be targeted to potentially disrupt the parasite’s development and subsequent survival in human blood. Scientists first proved that the mouse-infecting hookworms behaved similarly to human-infecting hookworms. Then, researchers tracked the digestion processes of the hookworms to understand how the hookworm digested heme—the molecular component of hemoglobin. Scientists tested a common chemical compound—quinolones—known to disrupt malaria and schistosoma parasites, and they found that the compound performed well in disrupting the digestion process of the hookworms. Though quinolones are not a viable treatment option for the long run—primarily due to widespread antibiotic resistance—scientists are optimistic that they’ve found a viable avenue to start exploring drugs and vaccine candidates that could affect hookworms in a similar way. Researchers found that revaccination with the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine could prevent sustained tuberculosis (TB) infection in adolescents, according to results from a phase 2 clinical trial. Researchers randomly assigned 990 healthy adolescents in South Africa who had been immunized with BCG as infants to one of three groups: A placebo group, an experimental vaccine group, and the BCG vaccine group, with the intent to monitor the rate at which individuals tested positive for TB. Researchers found that BCG’s efficacy of preventing sustained TB infection was 45 percent, 15 percent higher than the experimental vaccine, which was 30 percent. These results could help optimize BCG vaccination approaches and inform TB vaccine development efforts. A joint venture in Nigeria recently announced their locally produced vaccines will be ready to hit Nigerian markets in the next three to four years, marking the first time since 1991 that Nigerian-produced vaccines will be available to the public. The joint venture, composed of the Nigerian government and May&Baker Nigeria, targets local manufacturers of vaccines to form partnerships and work toward developing an array of vaccines for the Nigerian public. While the types of vaccines to be developed have not been disclosed to the public, the country’s former vaccine production laboratory tackled major public health threats like smallpox, yellow fever, and rabies. The government-run laboratory closed in 1991. This new joint venture plans to incorporate government support, private industry, and partnerships to bring relevant vaccines to the people.  

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. In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. Researchers discovered that the meal times of malaria-infected organisms may impact the rate at which the malaria parasite multiplies in the host’s blood. A team at the University of Edinburgh studied the parasitic rhythms of reproduction and invasion of red blood cells in malaria-infected mice and found that the parasites timed their daily multiplication rhythms to match when the animals were fed. When the mice’s feeding time changed, the parasites altered the timing in which they invaded red blood cells. Researchers believe that interfering with the biological processes that link eating to these parasite rhythms—through diet, drugs, or other approaches—could reduce the spread of malaria infection A team of scientists recently created a prototype oral flu vaccine that does not need to be temperature controlled—paving the way for potential new oral vaccines that do not require refrigeration or freezing. Unlike traditional biological vaccines, which are made from part of a virus or bacteria and must be temperature controlled to remain stable, this oral vaccine prototype contains manmade peptides that mimic peptides in real viruses. Scientists found the prototype triggered a strong immune response when tested in human cell cultures and in mice. While more research is needed, these early results are promising. A heat-stable oral vaccine would be easier to transport and store, which could improve care in low-resource, hard-to-reach communities were immunization supply chains may be insufficient. Scientists at the Jena and Friedrich Schiller University Hospital are working to develop a rapid antibiotic resistance test. Current diagnostics for drug-resistant infections can take up to 72 hours to deliver results—a long amount of time for these infections, which can be acutely life-threatening. Using light-based analytical methods combined with microfluidic sample processes—which the researchers colloquially referred to as a miniature Lab-on-a-Chip system—the scientists were able to clearly identify bacterial strains and their resistances in fewer than three hours. New rapid tests for antibiotic-resistant infections could help get patients on treatment more quickly and reduce the overprescription of antibiotics.