Research Roundup: A portable “cholera detection lab," Sabin acquires rights to develop Ebola and Marburg vaccines, and Uganda starts largest-ever Ebola vaccine trial

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. The first vaccine against chlamydia—one of the most common sexually transmitted infections—has proven to be safe and effective in a phase 1 clinical trial. The trial tested two different versions of the vaccine and though both elicited an immune response, one performed better than the other. Further testing will proceed with that version. Due to the complexity of the bacterium, researchers posit that a successful vaccine must provoke a strong immune response both with antibodies to fight bacteria outside of the cells, and immune system protein and cells to help clear the bacteria from infected cells. Approximately 131 million people are infected with chlamydia each year. If left untreated, it can cause chronic pelvic pain and infertility in women. Last Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug, pretomanid, for treatment of highly drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Pretomanid, developed by TB Alliance, was approved as part of a three-drug, six-month, all-oral regimen, which also includes bedaquiline and linezolid—collectively known as BPaL. In a clinical trial, 95 out of 107 patients had a successful outcome after six months of treatment with the regimen. The historical treatment success rate is 34 percent. Pretomanid is only the third FDA-approved anti-TB drug in more than 40 years, though TB remains the world’s number one infectious disease killer. In what is being hailed as a landmark announcement, two antibody-based therapies have proven to dramatically improve the survival rate of people newly infected with Ebola in a clinical trial conducted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—raising hope that the yearlong epidemic in the DRC and future outbreaks of the virus can be more easily contained. The two treatments, REGN-EB3, developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and mAb114, developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, were among four therapies tested as part of a clinical trial that began in November. These two treatments will now be offered to all patients, with experts recommending that the other two therapies involved in the clinical trial be stopped. The yearlong Ebola outbreak in the DRC, which was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization last month, has infected 2,800 people and killed more than 1,800 people.

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. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is hoping that an ambitious effort to create a “Google” for biomedical research could help researchers connect the dots between health data sets to unlock new scientific insights and discoveries. Launched by NIH in 2016, the Biomedical Data Translator program is attempting to create a tool that would integrate different data sources, ranging from electronic health records to clinical trial results, and apply machine learning techniques to reason through the information allowing researchers to make connections between not previously associated datasets and identify trends across them. So far, the program has awarded approximately US$17.5 million to 19 institutions across the country working to integrate and organize years of data. The initial feasibility phase of the project is set to end this year. Surveys conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 18 countries from 2014 to 2018 reveal an alarming surge in resistance to critical HIV drugs. In the past four years, 12 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas have surpassed the acceptable levels of drug resistance against two key HIV drugs, efavirenz and nevirapine—showing more than ten percent of adults with HIV have developed resistance to these drugs in these nations. Though the causes of drug resistance are unclear, the co-author of a WHO report on the survey’s findings suggests drug-resistant HIV may develop when people interrupt treatment. In response to this evidence, WHO recommends that countries use dolutegravir as first-line treatment against HIV since the likelihood the virus will develop resistance is lower with dolutegravir than with other antiretrovirals. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will provide biotech company, Valneva, with up to $23.4 million to fund the development of a single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine for Chikungunya—a mosquito-borne disease which causes fever, severe joint pain, muscle pain, and fatigue. The funding from CEPI will support vaccine manufacturing and late stage clinical development to help accelerate regulatory approval of the vaccine for use in regions where outbreaks occur. Valneva plans to maintain a stockpile of the vaccine and transfer its manufacturing to Chikungunya-endemic regions. Since Chikungunya re-emerged in 2004, approximately 3.4 million cases in 43 countries have been identified.