Research Roundup: Drug and vaccine combo bolsters malaria prevention, chikungunya vaccine enters phase 2/3 trials, and smartphone-based COVID-19 test gets EUA

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.Pfizer and Merck have both announced the launch of trials for their oral antiviral candidates to combat COVID-19, the companies stated separately last week. Pfizer’s phase 2/3 trial will enroll non-hospitalized, low-risk adults who have tested positive for COVID-19 to evaluate its pill, PF-07321332, alongside a low dose of ritonavir, a medication widely used in combination treatments for HIV. The antiviral treatment is designed to block the activity of a key enzyme that is needed for the coronavirus to multiply. Merck’s trial will enroll adults who live in the same household as someone diagnosed with symptomatic coronavirus infection to evaluate molnupiravir for the prevention of COVID-19. A separate trial is underway to test the drug’s use in treating non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Molnupiravir is designed to introduce errors into the RNA of the virus that eventually prevent it from replicating.A phase 3 trial for SK Bioscience and GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) COVID-19 vaccine began last week, seeking to enroll around 4,000 people around the world. In phase 1/2 data, the adjuvanted vaccine candidate induced strong neutralizing antibody responses to COVID-19. The phase 3 trial will compare results of the vaccine candidate against those of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, making it one of the first global phase 3 trials to actively evaluate two different COVID-19 vaccine candidates against each other for safety and immunogenicity. Results from the trial are expected in the first half of 2022, and SK Bioscience, GSK, and supporting partners hope to begin supply of the vaccine through the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility in that same period, depending on data and regulatory review.The World Health Organization (WHO) and Germany last week launched a pandemic intelligence hub to help governments identify future pandemics at an earlier stage and improve monitoring of new variant strains of COVID-19. The hub, based in Berlin, is designed to streamline global data-sharing by making it easier for governments to compare notes on emerging infectious diseases and pull in additional relevant information on travel patterns, trade routes, or human-animal interactions in agriculture. While governments and non-governmental organizations are collecting more and more information relevant to public health, databases rarely allow easy international comparisons, according to WHO. Improving global tracking of COVID-19 variants via genome sequencing is likely to be the new hub’s initial priority.

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. Moderna is launching human trials for two new HIV vaccines based on the mRNA technology used in its COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced last week. The phase 1 trial will recruit 56 participants between the ages of 18 and 50 to assess the vaccines’ safety and ability to generate a broad range of neutralizing antibodies against HIV. The two vaccine candidates, mRNA-1644 and mRNA-1574, are designed to combat HIV by inducing broadly neutralizing antibodies to levels not previously obtained by other shots. The antibodies can then target multiple variants of HIV and neutralize stable parts of the virus that won’t change as much as it mutates. The study, expected to run until May 2023, is a first step in a long, complex process, according to researchers.Researchers have discovered a series of drug compounds that are highly effective against the three main species of parasitic worms that cause human schistosomiasis, according to new research published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Currently, the only treatment for schistosomiasis is praziquantel, which is effective at a high dose against adult worms, but less so against juvenile worms, requiring repeat treatment. The new research involved screening more than 300,000 compounds to evaluate their ability to kill the worms, compared against praziquantel. The researchers identified a series of promising new drug candidates that appeared safe and highly effective against adult and juvenile worms—in a single dose around 10 times smaller than required for praziquantel. The drugs are now being explored by Merck Global Health Institute as a potential treatment for schistosomiasis.In phase 3 trial results, AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 antibody treatment, AZD7442, significantly reduced the risk of developing COVID-19 symptoms. The drug, a combination of two long-acting antibodies, reduced the risk of developing symptoms by 77 percent when given to patients who had not been exposed to COVID-19. No participants who were given the treatment developed a severe form of the disease. The monoclonal antibodies used in AZD7442, which mimic the body's natural immune response, were modified to be more long-lasting, potentially affording up to 12 months of protection. The drug could be particularly useful as a preventative treatment in patients for whom vaccines might be less effective, including immunocompromised individuals, AstraZeneca said in its statement. The company plans to submit the phase 3 results to a peer-reviewed journal and file for regulatory approval of the drug.