Taylor Capizola

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. Scientists have created a new process to detect tuberculosis (TB) by introducing a molecule to the bacteria’s outer layer that illuminates under fluorescent light. This innovation could help make sputum microscopy tests easier to perform, improving the accuracy and speed at which patients with TB are diagnosed and treated. While there are other staining methods in use, this molecule—DMN-trehalose—is actually incorporated by the TB bacteria as it builds up its outer protective layer, thus this method illuminates only living TB bacteria, unlike other stains which reveal both live and dead bacteria. This makes it easier for health professionals to diagnose TB and monitor a patient’s response to treatment over time. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco discovered new mechanisms by which HIV hides in infected cells, remaining in a latent mode that evades the body’s immune system and antiviral drugs. When the HIV virus infects immune cells, most cells start producing more of the virus, but a fraction of the cells become dormant. Current therapies are not able to kills these dormant cells, which can then reawaken and cause a resurgence of the virus in patients. To understand this progression better, researchers used a panel of tests to study the process by which these dormant, infected cells convert viral DNA to RNA and discovered that these latent cells stall out at various stages, marking their dormant status. Helping the dormant cells finish making RNA will wake them up, allowing the body to recognize and kill the infected cells with assistance from common antivirals. These findings could help scientists understand and develop new treatments to target and address the issue of latent HIV infection. Researchers in the Netherlands are undertaking an unusual approach to vaccine research, infecting 17 volunteers with parasitic worms as part of a new vaccine study for the potentially fatal disease schistosomiasis. Each volunteer agreed to have 20 male parasitic worms—worms that will be unable to reproduce or lay eggs—injected into their arms with the intent to be monitored for 12 weeks following infection. After 12 weeks, volunteers will receive a drug to kill the remaining worms. Researchers hope this study will show it is possible to test vaccines with this method, which is faster and more affordable than field research, which can take months or even years to run and complete.

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. An old malaria compound—primaquine—and a common dye with antimalarial properties—methylene blue—have shown effectiveness in preventing malaria transmission, according to a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Researchers found that by adding a single dose of primaquine and three doses of methylene blue to existing malaria medicines, it resulted in near complete cessation of human-to-mosquito transmission within two days. When infected with malaria-causing parasites via mosquito bite, a host may transmit the parasite back to mosquitos, which will likely cause future infection of a different host. These two compounds may aid in preventing this transmission and help curb future malaria infections. Public health experts recently met to review the latest data on chikungunya vaccine candidates and plan how to promote progress to get the candidates to market. Currently, there are 23 chikungunya vaccine candidates in the pipeline, with two vaccine candidates in phase 2 clinical trials. Researchers discussed the challenges facing developing an effective chikungunya vaccine, citing the unpredictability of where the next chikungunya outbreak could take place. Because of this, phase 3 clinical trials could prove difficult to conduct, unless the trials are conducted in non-human primates injected with human antibodies. Though more research and clinical trials are needed to bring an effective and safe chikungunya vaccine to market, experts believe these conversations will help. Recent data from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) suggests one dose of the oral cholera vaccine is effective in delivering short-term protection against the disease. Previous research from MSF suggested the single dose cholera vaccine provides protection for those with recent exposure to the disease, but the new data—collected from the 2016 cholera outbreak in Zambia—also suggests the vaccine provides protection to those ho have not been exposed to cholera for several years. While this data further demostrates the effectivesness of the single-dose oral cholera vaccine, more research—like the effectivness of the vaccine on children under five years of age—still must be determined.

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. High levels of antibiotic resistance are present in both high- and low-income countries, according to surveillance data from the new World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), which tracked suspected bacterial infections among 22 countries. Across different nations, GLASS found that patients with resistance to at least one of the common antibiotics for blood infections ranged from 0–82 percent. Patients with resistance to penicillin—the most common antibiotic used to treat pneumonia—ranged from 0–51 percent and patients with resistance to ciprofloxacin—a common antibiotic used to treat E. coli associated with urinary tract infections—ranged from 8–65 percent. This data suggests antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not only a threat to low-resource communities around the world, but also to highly developed areas. WHO hopes the survey will provide a more complete picture of AMR patterns and trends so individual nations and the global community develop and monitor interventions to combat this growing problem. Wellcome Trust has set up a new information-sharing effort—the Surveillance and Epidemiology of Drug-Resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC)—designed to help countries track, analyze, and share information about antimicrobial resistance (AMR). SEDRIC will connect experts from around the world to identify gaps in AMR surveillance, improve coordination, and help nations strengthen their data collection capacity. It will also look at ways technology can improve understanding of how pathogens before resistant and how infections spread. The effort will build on the work of the World Health Organization’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System by helping countries builder strong surveillance networks. Pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur has asked the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to review an experimental sleeping sickness medicine developed in partnership with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. The medicine is a clinically studied, ten-day oral treatment to combat sleeping sickness, a fatal disease endemic to Africa. EMA accepted the request to review under Article 58 and will eventually provide a scientific opinion in cooperation with WHO. This approval is a critical step toward registering the medicine for future use in endemic areas of Africa.

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. The World Health Organization has prequalified Bharart Biotech’s rotavirus vaccine—ROTAVAC—enabling United Nations agencies and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance to purchase the vaccine for use in low-income countries (LIC). Bharat is currently supplying the vaccine to LICs at one US dollar per dose and expects to be able to reduce the price if a threshold of doses are purchased. Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrhea and death in children younger than five years. ROTAVAC presents a new low-cost vaccine option to prevent rotavirus and is the first licensed rotavirus vaccine to be developed using a strain of the virus isolated, manufactured, and tested in India. A team of scientists have sequenced and analyzed genomes of multiple leprosy strains from around the world in an attempt to understand previously unknown mechanisms of drug resistance. Scientists found many of the genomes harbored large numbers of random mutations, explaining why many strains of the disease have become resistant to commonly used medicines. Leprosy is a painful disease that affects over 200,000 people every year, causing major damage to the skin, nerves, and eyes. Understanding the genomic structure and mutations of leprosy will aid scientists in developing effective treatments for leprosy and drug-resistant leprosy. Researchers at the University of Liverpool and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have developed a long-acting injectable form of malaria medicine that could simplify and improve malaria prevention. The scientists used nanotechnology—or the manipulation of matter on an atomic or molecular scale—to improve the delivery of an existing antimalarial through a new injectable formulation that can maintain blood concentration of the drug for weeks or months. Once injected into the muscle, this delivery method establishes a medicine depot that releases the antimalarial into the bloodstream over an extended period of time. Malaria chemoprophylaxis—the administration of antimalarial drugs prior to potential exposure—is a common malaria prevention strategy, but it requires patients take medicine daily to be effective. While still in the early stages of development, this new long-acting medicine could offer an alternative approach that may help patients improve adherence.  

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. Research carried out in part by an artificially intelligent (AI) robot discovered that a common ingredient in toothpaste—triclosan—showed potential to interrupt malaria-causing parasites at two critical stages of malaria progression. Triclosan, an ingredient used to prevent plaque build-up, is believed to halt the parasites growth in the blood and liver by inhibiting two different enzymes within the parasite, enoyl reductase and DHFR. Triclosan was able to target and inhibit DHFR, even in parasites resistant to the common antimalarial pyrimethamine. This discovery could potentially pave the way for new drug development, and the successful use of AI could result in more robots used for drug discovery purposes. A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded schistosomiasis vaccine candidate will soon enter a Phase 1b clinical trial in an endemic region of Brazil. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, the George Washington University, and the René Rachou Institute will lead a double-blind, randomized, and controlled study in a group of 60 males and non-pregnant females with potential previous exposure to the parasite to test two different formulations of the vaccine. Schistosomiasis is the second most deadly parasitic infection in the world, affecting more than 200 million people worldwide. The vaccine being tested targets one of two parasite species, which accounts for one-third of all cases and one-half of schistosomiasis deaths worldwide. Many individuals previously treated for schistosomiasis are susceptible to reinfection, highlighting the importance of developing a safe and effective vaccine. A new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate yielded positive results in monkeys, according to a new study published in Nature Medicine. The monkey species, rhesus macaques, are genetically similar to humans, but are significantly more susceptible to TB. The vaccine reduced overall TB disease by 68 percent—a major increase compared to the non-measurable protection rate of the current TB vaccine in rhesus macaques. Additionally, 41 percent of vaccinated monkeys had complete protection from TB, while 30 percent developed a less severe case of TB than unvaccinated monkeys. Thirty percent of vaccinated rhesus monkeys showed no protection. TB kills more than 1.7 million people every year, and the rise of drug-resistant TB highlights the growing need for an effective vaccine.