Research Roundup: A malaria-fighting toothpaste ingredient and new vaccine candidates for schistosomiasis and tuberculosis

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. Researchers discovered a way to reprogram immune cells to attack tuberculosis (TB), potentially paving the way for new methods to combat the disease. Traditionally, TB vaccine research has focused on activating T cells, which has yielded overall mediocre results. In this case, researchers turned their attention to stem cells. They found that when they administered the current TB vaccine BCG to mice in a way that accessed the mice’s bone marrow, it was able to reprogram their stem cells to mobilize white blood cells capable of swallowing and killing TB-causing bacteria. Researchers were then able use this finding to dissect the genomic pathways involved in triggering this enhanced immune response. Though further research is needed on the potential of stem cells, researchers are hopeful this new method could lead to a more effective vaccine against the disease. A group of 180 scientists, malaria program leaders, and global policymakers recently updated the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (malERA) Refresh Collection, a research and development agenda that aims to accelerate progress toward total malaria elimination and eradication. Launched in 2011, the original agenda aimed to identify key knowledge gaps and define tools needed to combat malaria. The updated version addresses progress made and identifies the main challenges remaining across the areas of basic science and enabling technologies; combination interventions and modeling; diagnostics, drugs, vaccines, and vector control; insecticide and drug resistance; characterizing the reservoir and measuring transmission; and health systems and policy research. The developers of the collection hope it will provide a framework for malaria-focused research funders, the World Health Organization, and impacted nations as they make programmatic decisions for malaria elimination and eradication. Scientists at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center believe the genomic sequence of the sooty mangabey monkey may provide useful knowledge in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Sooty mangabeys are natural hosts for the Simonian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)—a genetic relative of the HIV infection—yet the animals are able to maintain healthy levels of immune cells after infection, preventing any future progression to an AIDS-like disease. After sequencing the genome of the sooty mangabey and comparing it to the genomes of humans and other apes, scientists found two major differences in immune system proteins in the genome of the sooty mangabey, which may help scientists better understand why sooty mangabeys avoid AIDS-like illness despite SIV infection. Scientists hope that further research on these genomic differences will pave the way for improved long-term care of HIV-positive individuals, including pregnant women, and unlock new avenues for vaccine research.