Breakthroughs Blog: Pandemic preparedness

Though the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an end to the public health emergency of international concern for COVID-19 back in May, rising COVID cases and new innovations continue to make headlines in December—exemplifying this year as one still dominated by the legacy of the pandemic but also marked by exciting advances in global health research and development (R&D). As the year comes to an end, GHTC reflects on a few of the global health innovation stories that shaped 2023. 1. COVID-19 leaves a complicated legacy of scientific achievement but growing political backlash. While we all hoped the experience of COVID-19 would usher in a new era of proactive health preparedness and improved scientific understanding, 2023 has proved that the legacy of the pandemic is complicated, and history is still actively being written. On the positive side, it has been exciting to see groundbreaking research fueled by COVID-19 funding continue to bear fruit. Applying lessons learned from the pandemic response, researchers and funders alike have sought to accelerate innovative solutions to make countermeasures easier and cheaper to produce, deploy, and administer. For example, this past year brought the announcement of the Biden administration’s more than $5 billion successor to Operation Warp Speed—Project NextGen—to deliver next-generation vaccines and treatments, as well as positive clinical results from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech trials on combination COVID-19 and flu shots, and promising research results and funding announcements regarding a variety of needle-free vaccine technologies, including those delivered via nasal spray, inhaler, pen applicator device, and oral film. Taken together, this research could fundamentally alter our approach to controlling COVID-19, as well as ultimately help more people access and benefit from vaccines for a range of deadly diseases. Yet, 2023 could also be characterized as a year of COVID-19 political backlash, particularly in the United States. Fueled by lingering anger over COVID-related public health restrictions, misinformation, and concerns over the origins of the pandemic among their supporters, the Republican-led House of Representatives spent the year calling current and former Biden administration health officials before various subcommittees to testify on their actions, putting science and public health agencies under increasing scrutiny. Additionally, the House has proposed a funding bill for fiscal year 2024 that, if enacted, would slash funding for key agencies that were at the center of the COVID-19 response, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as cut funding to WHO and limit funding to Chinese government-supported research institutions. Only time will tell whether these efforts ultimately prove more bark than bite or whether they will lead to harmful policies and funding cuts. 2. Attention turns to research on other pandemic and epidemic threats. The year brought no rest for the weary when it comes to emerging infectious disease threats. Alongside managing COVID-19 as a here-to-stay threat, in 2023, the world also dealt with a still-smoldering global mpox outbreak, the conclusion of a Sudan Ebola outbreak in Uganda, and outbreaks of Marburg in Tanzania and Equatorial New Guinea. With these threats looming in the backdrop, researchers forged ahead on efforts to boost future preparedness. The Sabin Vaccine Institute and IAVI launched trials for their Marburg and Sudan virus vaccine candidates, respectively. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, also announced this year that some remaining funds from COVAX, the COVID-19 vaccine delivery initiative, would be redirected toward further investigational vaccine candidates for those two deadly viruses. Over the summer, Moderna launched a phase 1/2 trial of its mpox vaccine after having begun preclinical work during last year’s major mpox outbreak. Universal influenza shots and combination COVID-19 and flu shots also saw exciting advances this year, with the National Institutes of Health launching a clinical trial testing an mRNA universal flu vaccine and biopharmaceutical company Osivax’s broad-spectrum influenza vaccine candidate showing strong results. 3. mRNA vaccine technology remains an area of growth, particularly for Africa. The success of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines has inspired a flurry of efforts to leverage mRNA technology to address other diseases and potential pandemic threats, as well as to remedy the inequity in access to new tools faced by African countries during the pandemic. BioNTech is advancing mRNA vaccine candidates for malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV, among others, and initiated in April a phase 1 clinical trial to test mRNA vaccine candidates against tuberculosis. This year, newly published research also found that a novel mRNA-based malaria vaccine was effective in animals that had already been exposed to malaria. Additionally, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations this year announced support for a variety of mRNA vaccine candidates against virus families that can affect humans, aiming to create a library of prototype vaccines that can be rapidly adapted as new viral threats emerge. 2023 saw the official launch of the mRNA vaccine technology hub in South Africa, which will pursue vaccines for COVID-19 and other poverty-related diseases to be produced for the African continent. Gavi also announced the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, which will invest up to $1 billion in boosting African manufacturing, while BioNTech opened an mRNA vaccine factory in Rwanda, which is expected to become part of a decentralized and robust end-to-end mRNA vaccine manufacturing network in Africa. The hope is that these efforts will boost the capacity of African innovators to design, develop, and produce at scale exciting new technologies to tackle diseases with a high burden on the continent and mitigate the equity challenges exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.  4. Two vaccines for malaria are now recommended. In October, WHO recommended the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford—two years after recommending RTS,S, the first malaria vaccine—adding another important tool to the world’s arsenal of malaria control interventions. Additionally, results reported in late 2023 about the pilot rollout of RTS,S showed positive findings about the lives it has already saved, making the case for a broader rollout of RTS,S and the potential of integrating R21 into multipronged efforts to fight malaria, as well as hopefully encouraging further innovation in the space. While right now supply of both malaria vaccines remains constrained, manufacturers of both vaccines have agreed to scale up production to meet global demand. 5. Two major firsts for NTDs. 2023 saw two major firsts for innovation against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which hopefully will inspire further investment to fill the growing funding shortfalls in NTD R&D. In November, the US Food and Drug Administration announced its approval of the world’s first vaccine against chikungunya, a chronic and debilitating disease that has no specific treatment, which has become an increasing global threat due to climate change. The single-dose shot was developed by Valneva. A month prior, Johnson & Johnson presented new data showing that its pill for dengue fever appeared to protect against a form of the virus in a small human challenge trial done with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, providing hope for the first-ever specific treatment for dengue, a serious disease that currently threatens about half of the world’s population, which is similarly a growing threat around the world due to climate change.  6. Setbacks and hope in HIV innovation. Last month brought disappointing news for the global health community as researchers from the PrEPVacc trial that was testing two different HIV vaccine regimens in Africa announced that the study had been shut down after an independent data monitoring committee concluded there was little or no chance the study would demonstrate efficacy. This leaves no efficacy trials underway globally for HIV vaccines.  While this vaccine outcome is certainly discouraging, in more welcome news, 2023 saw exciting developments in efforts to expand affordability and access to long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) options. In May, Indian drug company Cipla announced that a generic version of cabotegravir long-acting (CAB-LA)—the first long-acting injectable PrEP option—will be manufactured at its plants in South Africa for the first time, which could potentially offer millions of people at risk of HIV infection in Africa access to this drug. In December, GHTC had the privilege of honoring the partners, led by ViiV Healthcare, that developed and are accelerating access to CAB-LA for PrEP for their efforts to advance this groundbreaking new product that could transform global HIV prevention efforts.  2023 also saw Population Council announce that South African company Kiara Health will start producing vaginal rings for HIV prevention in the next few years, which could make the innovative tool cheaper and more readily available to women in Africa. The dapivirine ring, which has been approved by nearly a dozen countries and WHO offers women an alternative long-acting HIV prevention method that can be used discretely without a sexual partner’s knowledge or consent.  7. Urgency and awareness of AMR continues to rise. Over the summer, WHO published its first global research agenda for antimicrobial resistance (AMR), outlining topics and needed tools that researchers should focus on to address its rise. The summer of 2023 also saw the largest ever investment from a country in global AMR surveillance—£210 million from the United Kingdom to support the Fleming Fund’s activities in strengthening surveillance and workforce capacity in countries where the threat of AMR is the highest, including investing in new genome sequencing technologies. This year also saw some exciting announcements about ongoing and upcoming research to address AMR. The Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) received renewed support from G7 governments and launched three funding rounds, which elicited more than 200 applications from around the world. The Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) announced positive results from an unprecedented global phase 3 clinical trial testing a first-in-class oral antibiotic to treat uncomplicated gonorrhea, which if approved, will be the first new antibiotic for treating the bacterial infection in decades. Beyond therapeutics, innovation in diagnostics is also essential to addressing AMR. This year, a new study found that a combination of fluorescence microscopy and artificial intelligence was shown to be effective in detecting AMR across multiple antibiotics, a tool that could help health care providers better treat patients with antibiotics and ultimately stall the rise of AMR. 8. Exciting policy developments in the United States and at WHO could boost global health innovation. At the 76th World Health Assembly held in May, member states adopted a historic resolution on strengthening global diagnostic capacity. The resolution, which GHTC advocated for alongside partners like FIND, recognizes the need for countries to prioritize access to appropriate diagnostic tests and calls upon countries to put in place national strategies to expand diagnostic testing and utilize diagnostic data in health decision-making. In November, GHTC also welcomed the introduction in the US House of Representatives of the Supporting Innovative Global Health Technologies (SIGHT) Act, legislation championed by GHTC to empower the US Agency for International Development to boost its health R&D capabilities. The bipartisan bill would create a distinct disease-agnostic program area and budget line for health R&D within the agency’s Global Health Bureau and establish a Chief Innovation Officer for Health position. For other fascinating global health news delivered to your inbox weekly and to stay abreast of developments in 2023 and beyond, sign up now to receive GHTC’s R&D News Roundup newsletter. Image credits from top to bottom: US Department of State, US Food and Drug Administration, USAID in Africa, USAID in Africa/RTI International/Patrick Adams, USAID in Africa, PATH/Georgina Goodwin, PATH/ Patrick McKern, WHO/Pierre Albouy.

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. Last Thursday, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, announced the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, which will invest up to $1 billion in boosting African manufacturing to address the inequality in vaccine access faced by Africans during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to produce vaccines to tackle diseases with a high burden on the continent, including cholera and malaria. The funding for the new scheme comes from leftover money from the COVAX initiative, which aimed to help the world’s poorest countries access COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. The accelerator is expected to launch in June of next year and hopes to ensure African manufacturers can offer competitive prices, even for new technologies like viral vector and mRNA vaccines.The startup NanoPin Technologies has developed an ultra-sensitive, blood-based test for difficult-to-detect tuberculosis (TB) cases now on the market, which is also the foundation for a multiplex TB and HIV test the company is developing. Both the NanoDetect-TB blood test, which is supposed to ease and speed up the detection of active TB, and the NanoDetect-TB/HIV multiplex assay, which uses quantitation of viral and bacterial loads to simultaneously detect HIV and TB, offer potential advantages over existing tools. Currently available tests, including the gold standard sputum-based methods for TB detection, can have low sensitivity to samples from patients with HIV and TB coinfection. Further research will be necessary to demonstrate that the multiplex test maintains efficacy in the field and that it can continue to be sensitive while reducing cost, complexity, and instrument requirements as much as possible.Last week at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa, researchers from the PrEPVacc trial that was testing two different vaccine regimens in Africa announced that the study has been shut down, leaving no HIV efficacy trials underway globally. The trial was halted after an independent data monitoring committee concluded there was little or no chance the study would demonstrate efficacy. The study had previously been dubbed the last chance for an HIV vaccine until the 2030s. PrEPVacc was a pioneering study as one of the first large, African-led HIV vaccine trials and one of the first trials to incorporate PrEP. However, the trial did use older vaccine designs that some scientists doubted would demonstrate adequate efficacy. The hope is that data from the halted trial can eventually inform future trials for new and innovative HIV tools.

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. This month, with support from the local government, German biotechnology company BioNtech is opening an mRNA vaccine factory in Rwanda, which is expected to become the first of what the company says will be a decentralized and robust end-to-end mRNA vaccine manufacturing network in Africa that will manufacture novel vaccines for Africans across the continent. The plant is expected to start by producing 50 million vaccines and will increase production based on demand. BioNTech is currently advancing vaccine candidates to address malaria and tuberculosis based on its mRNA vaccine platform.Last week, Population Council announced that South African company Kiara Health will start producing vaginal rings for HIV prevention in the next few years, which could make the innovative tool cheaper and more readily available to women in Africa. The dapivirine ring, which has been authorized by nearly a dozen countries and the World Health Organization, offers women an alternative HIV prevention method that can be taken without anyone else’s knowledge or consent. Population Council owns the rights to the ring, which is currently produced by a Swedish company. About a half million rings have been made available freely in Africa through donor support. Population Council and Kiara estimate that the company will be able to produce double the currently available supply annually.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), and Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia last week announced the launch of the Research Preparedness Program West Africa, which will support a consortium of regional stakeholders to bolster the growing clinical research sector across the region. Specifically, the partners will work toward building up clinical trial capacity to conduct the first-ever large-scale phase 2b and 3 clinical trials of Lassa fever vaccines in the region. The program also aims to improve general preparedness to ensure the capacity to generate high-quality clinical trial data during future outbreaks of other diseases in the region in as little as 100 days.

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. Last Wednesday, the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) announced the results of a successful phase 3 trial, conducted in collaboration with Innoviva Specialty Therapeutics and supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which found that a single dose of a first-in-class oral antibiotic, zoliflodacin, was as safe and effective as standard therapy for treating uncomplicated urogenital gonorrhea. The growing resistance of the gonorrhea bacteria to many classes of antibiotics has left only one remaining globally recommended treatment available as an option. Zoliflodacin, if approved, could not only help address those rising cases because studies have shown that it is active against multi-drug resistant gonorrhea strains, but the antibiotic will also simplify treatment because it is one pill rather than an injection and a pill like the current standard therapy. Last week, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the University of Oxford announced the launch of a new project to develop prototype vaccines against an arenavirus called Junin virus, which causes Argentine hemorrhagic fever. The project is aimed at kickstarting the broader development of vaccines for arenaviruses, which include the virus that causes Lassa fever, one of CEPI’s priority pathogens. CEPI will invest $25 million in the development of early prototypes of viral vector and mRNA vaccines against the Junin virus, as well as the improvement of the ChAdOx viral vector technology, part of the broader partnership between CEPI and Oxford to support vaccine development for a variety of viral families with future epidemic or pandemic potential. In a recent study, researchers have identified a new molecule in cells that is necessary for the Ebola and Marburg viruses to infect and spread in the body and that is also involved in SARS-CoV-2 infections. This discovery could eventually lead to new antiviral drugs for Ebola and Marburg, among other viral infections. The molecular, CCZ1, is a protein that regulates the transport of other molecules by cells. Researchers from the Karolinska Institutet and Institute of Molecular Biotechnology used advanced stem cell libraries and lab-grown organs to study how viruses infect the human liver and blood vessels and ultimately demonstrate how CCZ1 operates as a key factor in their spread through the body.