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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. A breath test could be an alternative approach to malaria diagnostics, according to a new study conducted by Washington University in St. Louis. The study focused on malaria-infected children in Malawi and showed that they had a different set of compounds in their breath compared to healthy children. Based on these compounds, researchers were then able to diagnose malaria infection with 83 percent accuracy. There is a critical need for alternative diagnostic methods for malaria, especially as the common, rapid diagnostic blood test is becoming less effective over time. More research is needed to study this diagnostic approach across different populations affected by malaria, but researchers are hopeful about this new avenue of malaria diagnostics. Researchers at the New York University College of Dentistry in collaboration with Rheonix Inc. have modified an existing model used for rapid HIV testing to test for the Zika virus. The newly developed test uses saliva for rapid identification of the diagnostic markers of the Zika virus and is an improvement over conventional Zika diagnostic techniques that require blood and can take hours to provide results. Further, this new test allows researchers to approximate the viral load in a saliva sample, allowing them to understand the severity of Zika and the body’s response to the virus, which is useful, especially among pregnant women. Researchers are optimistic about this test because it is quick and requires little training. Following a severe outbreak of yellow fever throughout Brazil, the country launched last month the world’s largest vaccine campaign using a fractional dose of the yellow fever vaccine. The goal of the campaign is to provide a fractional dose of the vaccine—one-fifth of the regular dose—to those living in 69 municipalities in the country, which will provide up to a year of protection against the illness. Though Brazil hopes to immunize 22.3 million individuals, only about 3.95 million have been vaccinated at this point. While this is not the first time fractional dosing of yellow fever vaccines have been used during an outbreak, this large-scale campaign will provide evidence and data for researchers aiming to implement similar campaigns to advance the goal of eliminating yellow fever epidemics globally by 2026.

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. Using a new research platform that extracts DNA directly from soil, researchers at Rockefeller University have discovered a new class of antibiotics. Scientists have long seen soil as a potential untapped source for new antibiotics; however, tapping this resource has proved challenging because only about 1 percent of bacterial species in soil can be cultured in labs. This new discovery platform is culture-independent. It allows scientists to extract, clone, and sequence DNA from the soil without growing bacteria in the lab. Researchers are hopeful this new platform can be scaled to systematically search for new antibiotics in the environment. With recent advances in gene therapy techniques, researchers are looking at the potential of these techniques to improve treatment for those living with AIDS and cure the disease. Scientists have used gene-editing tools to cut DNA at the exact spot to disable the HIV entryway gene both in immune T cells and blood stem cells. While the results of these initial experiments were less promising than researchers had hoped, there was a silver lining: Patients saw a decrease in the number of cells where the HIV virus lurked in a dormant state. Thus, researchers are looking at the potential to pair altered cells with existing antiretroviral medicines to improve the body’s ability to eliminate the virus. Scientists are also looking at the potential to use gene editing to introduce new genes that would help T cells recognize and kill HIV, similar to therapy introduced last year to treat cancer. Aeras announced resultsfrom an innovative clinical trial that provides new encouraging evidence that tuberculosis (TB) vaccines could prevent sustained infections in high-risk adolescents. A prevention-of-infection phase 2 trial in South Africa demonstrated that revaccination with the Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine significantly reduced sustain TB infections in adolescents. Another experimental vaccine candidate, H4:IC31, also reduced sustained infections, although not at statistically significant levels. However, these results mark the first time a subunit vaccine has shown any indication of ability to protect against TB infection or disease in humans.

The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) is deeply concerned over President Trump’s fiscal year (FY) 2019 budget proposal, which includes significant cuts to critical government programs that advance innovation to improve the health of millions of people in need around the world, including Americans. The United States has long led the world in developing vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and other technologies for neglected diseases and conditions that affect the world’s most vulnerable people, and the President’s budget proposal threatens to undermine this scientific and humanitarian legacy.  The proposal cuts funding to global health research and development (R&D) at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH). If enacted, these cuts will hamper the creation of new tools to address the world’s greatest global health challenges and undermine our ability to prevent and contain disease outbreaks. For example: Across the board cuts for USAID global health programs, including the elimination of funding to support HIV/AIDS research, represent a backslide in US humanitarian leadership and threaten to slow the creation and roll out of new health innovations that both save lives worldwide and make our foreign aid programs more effective and efficient. Cuts to CDC’s global health activities at the Center for Global Health (CGH) and the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) will further constrain an agency already under-resourced to address the magnitude of health challenges we face at home and internationally. While GHTC is pleased to see the Administration prioritize investment in global health security, this increased funding should not come at the expense of other vital CGH programs that support R&D of technologies and other activities to detect, prevent, and respond to health threats. Likewise, proposed cuts to NCEZID programs that develop interventions to combat infectious diseases run counter to the Administration’s global health security goals and will directly compromise domestic and international preparedness. Cuts to the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Fogarty International Center at NIH could erode America’s leadership in medical research and jeopardize important work to build research capacity in partner nations to fight global diseases. While GHTC is encouraged to see the Administration did not propose eliminating the Fogarty Center, as it did last year, it is important to ensure the center's activities are fully funded. “The United States is a leader in research and development that drives biomedical solutions to the world’s most pressing health challenges—benefiting Americans at home and populations in need overseas,” said Jamie Bay Nishi, GHTC’s Director. “Funding cuts to global health R&D programs at USAID, CDC, and NIH cede this leadership, retreat from humanitarian values that define us as a nation, and leave Americans and the world vulnerable to longstanding and emerging health threats.” GHTC was pleased to see Congress reject similar cuts proposed by the Administration last year, and we urge Congress to continue its history of bipartisan support for global health and medical research and once again reject these proposed cuts.