Play: TRICK or TREATment?

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. On World Polio Day last week, the World Health Organization officially declared that type three poliovirus has been eradicated—making it the second of the three strains of the virus to be wiped out. Naturally-occurring cases of the last remaining virus strain, type one, are now limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan with a total of just 33 new cases last year. Though much progress has been made toward eradicating this disease, the number of confirmed cases this year has risen to 88 in those two countries as violence and mistrust have hindered vaccination campaigns. Cases caused by the vaccine itself have also thwarted eradication efforts. The National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will jointly invest US$200 million over the next four years to develop genetic-based cures for sickle cell disease and HIV. Both partners have vowed that the cures will be both affordable and available in low-resource countries hit hardest by the two diseases, particularly in Africa. This partnership reflects growing concerns that scientific advances such as gene therapies and genome-editing are prohibitively expensive and therefore out of reach to most patients. This collaboration aims to move gene-based therapies into clinical trials in the United States and countries in sub-Saharan Africa within the next seven to ten years and eventually make treatments for sickle cell disease and HIV available in the hardest hit areas. After a two-day meeting in Okayama, Japan, health ministers of the world’s twenty largest economies issued a declaration endorsing the rapid achievement of universal health coverage (UHC), more effective support of healthy ageing, increased attention to health emergencies and their causes, and more forceful action on antimicrobial resistance. The G20 Health Ministers Declaration goes well beyond the general commitments made by G20 leaders to advance global health goals after their two-day meeting back in June. As part of the commitment to UHC, the health ministers recognized the importance of access to medicines and vaccination and reaffirmed pledges to end HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, among other measures.

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. An Ebola vaccine developed by Merck & Co was approved by European regulators on Friday in a move hailed as a “triumph for public health” by the World Health Organization (WHO). The vaccine, which protects against the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus—the one that most commonly causes outbreaks—, is being used on an emergency basis during the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The regulators recommended conditional marketing authorization for the vaccine, which the European Commission is likely to affirm in the coming weeks, granting full marketing authorization to all member states under its purview. The vaccine is also under review by the US Food and Drug Administration using a fast-track pathway, with a decision expected in the first quarter of next year. Last week, WHO released its 2019 Global Tuberculosis Report which highlights several new technologies in the pipeline to diagnose and treat tuberculosis (TB), including a promising vaccine that could prevent people with latent TB from developing the disease. The report cites that the vaccine is one of 23 drugs, combination regimens, and vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials. Though funding for TB research and development reached US$772 million in 2017, it remains well below the target of $2 billion annually agreed to by United Nations member states at the High-Level Meeting on TB in 2018. Researchers in Brazil have identified a new parasitic disease that causes severe damage to the liver, spleen, and skin and is believed to have infected more than 150 people and caused two deaths in a northeast region of the country. The disease displays similar symptoms to two forms of leishmaniasis–a neglected tropical disease spread by infected female sandflies that attacks both the skin and internal organs. However, this new disease, which is caused by the Cridia sergipensis parasite, does not appear to respond to conventional treatments for leishmaniasis. A researcher involved in the journal article identifying this new disease emphasized the need for further research. “This is the first warning. We still need to diagnose where this parasite is located, what the vectors are, how it is transmitted, and develop an effective medicine,” he said.