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GHTC delivered the below statement at the second official meeting of the negotiators of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system annex to the Pandemic Agreement.We welcome the start of negotiations for a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system. Your work together in the months to come will be essential to making the world safer for everyone. Given the short timeline for finalizing negotiations, we propose the following actions to ensure successful deliberations: First, we call for a process that systematically and meaningfully engages civil society and relevant stakeholders as experts to reflect an inclusive, whole-of-society approach. We welcome the strategy of hosting informal sessions with experts, member states, and civil society ahead of each meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group to help advance shared understanding and agreement.  We also call on member states to work with all relevant stakeholders to define the scope of "materials and sequence information on pathogens with pandemic potential." Negotiations to date have focused on human samples and information, even though the majority of emerging infectious diseases are zoonoses.Lastly, greater clarity is also still needed about how the World Health Organization will distribute benefits. The current draft agreement states that "the distribution of these vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics shall be on the basis of public health risk and need, with particular attention to the needs of developing countries."  But "public health risk and need" is a subjective categorization and could necessarily be affected by political imperatives. We therefore urge member states to outline decision-making criteria and make these publicly available for scrutiny. We know the coming months will present a challenging test for member states to find breakthroughs, and we encourage all parties to underscore their political commitment to the process. Success can only be achieved through a strong emphasis on equity and transparency, enshrined through robust and meaningful provisions in the PABS framework. We look forward to our continued participation in these forums to advance a meaningful outcome.

Last Wednesday, Emergent BioSolutions announced that it has received a $56 million contract extension with the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response to supply the US government with doses of a combined smallpox/mpox vaccine. The single-dose vaccine was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2007 for smallpox and, since 2024, has been one of two approved vaccines for smallpox and mpox. The vaccine doses, which will be stored in the Strategic National Stockpile, aim to boost US preparedness for future public health emergencies. A novel breakthrough method that utilizes artificial intelligence and advanced imaging technologies to more accurately and efficiently identify therapeutic antibodies could transform the way researchers develop treatments for infectious diseases, particularly emerging diseases, by significantly accelerating research. The method reduces the time needed to identify antibodies with potential from weeks to under a day and can also accomplish this task more efficiently, requiring far fewer researchers dedicating their time to screening thousands of candidate antibodies. This could allow researchers to move on from antibody discovery to the later stages of drug and vaccine development earlier and, ultimately, bring lifesaving products to patients faster. A recently published study found promising results for a new approach to developing broad-spectrum antivirals to treat existing viral infections and maybe even to prevent infections from emerging viral threats. Broad-spectrum antivirals are treatments that could combat a wide range of viruses by hitting essential targets that are common across many different viruses. While there are broad-spectrum treatments for bacterial infections, there has not been a similar broad-spectrum antiviral treatment approved for human use, in part because the proteins on the surface of a virus vary widely and change rapidly over time. The researchers focused on small molecules called synthetic carbohydrate receptors (SRCs), which earlier studies have suggested could be a potential target for antiviral medicines. They tested 57 different SRCs against six deadly viruses from three different viral families, including the viruses behind COVID-19, MERS, Nipah, and Ebola, finding several promising SRCs that blocked cells in the lab from being affected by all the viruses, some of which also later demonstrated promising safety and efficacy results in mice. 

Last week, Monod Bio, a spinout company from the University of Washington, announced that it has received a $1.5 million Gates Foundation grant to develop a urine-based rapid diagnostic test for tuberculosis (TB). The company aims to help fill the gap of non-sputum-based, rapid, point-of-care TB diagnostics that are suitable for low-resource settings. Most World Health Organization-recommended TB diagnostics rely on sputum, which not all patients can provide and can be logistically difficult for health care providers to collect, but current alternatives using urine and stool samples have low specificity, and current TB tests are also not available at the point of care in communities. The test will utilize the company’s NovoBodies, novel proteins designed to be highly specific and sensitive—diagnostics have primarily used natural proteins that are adapted for use in tests.  The Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) last week announced that it is awarding $1 million to Zeteo Tech to further work on a rapid, non-invasive diagnostic test that can diagnose lower respiratory tract infections, like pneumonia, using breath samples. Lower respiratory tract infections kill 700,000 children under five annually. A less invasive, rapid test could help speed up diagnosis and guide more effective treatment, particularly of drug-resistant infections, helping reduce the prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics that can fuel the rise of antibiotic resistance. Zeteo’s platform analyzes the tiny particles and droplets in breath samples to distinguish between viral and bacterial infections and assess antibiotic susceptibility.  The results of a clinical trial released last week found that a common over-the-counter nasal spray that is used for seasonal allergies could work as an antiviral against a range of respiratory infections, including influenza, RSV, and the virus that causes COVID-19. The researchers suggest that the nasal spray, Azelastine, could help block COVID-19 infections by inhibiting a key enzyme that the virus uses to replicate or by preventing the virus from latching on to the point at which the virus enters human cells. If proven safe and effective in further studies, Azelastine could serve as an easily scalable, over-the-counter prevention method complementary to vaccines and other tools, especially when a virus is spreading among a community or in high-risk situations, like when traveling or attending crowded events. The research also provides another potential target for future vaccines.