Breakthroughs Blog: Antimicrobial resistance

Last week, Monod Bio, a spinout company from the University of Washington, announced that it has received a $1.5 million Gates Foundation grant to develop a urine-based rapid diagnostic test for tuberculosis (TB). The company aims to help fill the gap of non-sputum-based, rapid, point-of-care TB diagnostics that are suitable for low-resource settings. Most World Health Organization-recommended TB diagnostics rely on sputum, which not all patients can provide and can be logistically difficult for health care providers to collect, but current alternatives using urine and stool samples have low specificity, and current TB tests are also not available at the point of care in communities. The test will utilize the company’s NovoBodies, novel proteins designed to be highly specific and sensitive—diagnostics have primarily used natural proteins that are adapted for use in tests.  The Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) last week announced that it is awarding $1 million to Zeteo Tech to further work on a rapid, non-invasive diagnostic test that can diagnose lower respiratory tract infections, like pneumonia, using breath samples. Lower respiratory tract infections kill 700,000 children under five annually. A less invasive, rapid test could help speed up diagnosis and guide more effective treatment, particularly of drug-resistant infections, helping reduce the prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics that can fuel the rise of antibiotic resistance. Zeteo’s platform analyzes the tiny particles and droplets in breath samples to distinguish between viral and bacterial infections and assess antibiotic susceptibility.  The results of a clinical trial released last week found that a common over-the-counter nasal spray that is used for seasonal allergies could work as an antiviral against a range of respiratory infections, including influenza, RSV, and the virus that causes COVID-19. The researchers suggest that the nasal spray, Azelastine, could help block COVID-19 infections by inhibiting a key enzyme that the virus uses to replicate or by preventing the virus from latching on to the point at which the virus enters human cells. If proven safe and effective in further studies, Azelastine could serve as an easily scalable, over-the-counter prevention method complementary to vaccines and other tools, especially when a virus is spreading among a community or in high-risk situations, like when traveling or attending crowded events. The research also provides another potential target for future vaccines. 

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 week, the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) announced that it is awarding $3 million to Baxiva to support the development of a vaccine that targets the most common serotypes associated with invasive Escherichia coli infections. E. coli is the leading cause of urinary tract infections around the world and a common cause of neonatal sepsis infections, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The candidate uses new targets that haven’t been used in other vaccines and targets several bacterial strains. The company’s rapid development platform also enables it to quickly design vaccines targeting various types of bacteria.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI) last week announced a global collaborative effort to carry out epidemiological and computational modelling projects to help strengthen scientific understanding of the Rift Valley fever and its impact across Africa, helping guide the planning of future clinical trials assessing much-needed vaccine candidates for the disease. Despite major Rift Valley fever outbreaks seen in Africa and beyond and global recognition of the need to boost R&D efforts, there are large gaps in our knowledge about the burden and spread of the disease. The two projects, led by institutions in Kenya and Tanzania and supported by global partners, will assess the impact of the disease across Africa, as well as forecast its future burden, providing crucial data for vaccine developers to plan large-scale trials when the virus is widely circulating.A new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham demonstrates that an antibody designed to target the dengue virus could also block the spread of the Zika virus, an important finding that could inform the development of much-needed treatments for Zika. There are no approved treatments for Zika, a dangerous virus that can pose severe risks to pregnant people and their babies. In a novel preclinical in vivo model, the antibody helped stop the virus from spreading, particularly in vulnerable parts of the body, leading to improved survival rates.

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. A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used artificial intelligence (AI) to design two new potential antibiotics to target drug-resistant gonorrhea and MRSA, which were successful in laboratory and animal tests. Rising antimicrobial resistance has underscored the urgent need for new antibiotics to treat drug-resistant infections, and scientists have been researching how AI could play a role in streamlining the tricky, time-consuming, and expensive task of searching through thousands of known chemicals to identify ones with potential to become new antibiotics. These researchers also brought the technology into the next step of drug development, using generative AI to actually design antibiotic compounds for further study by feeding the AI model data about the chemical structure of known compounds and whether they slow the growth of different bacterial species. While the antibiotic compounds will still need to undergo years of further study and clinical trials, they could serve, if proven effective, as important new tools against the rise of antimicrobial resistance, and, more broadly, this research could pave the way for AI to revolutionize antibiotic discovery, just as this growing threat heightens the need for new drugs.Newly published results from a study done by PATH and PT Bio Farma show that the novel live attenuated type 1 and 3 oral polio vaccines are similarly safe and effective compared to the monovalent Sabin-strain oral polio vaccines. The novel types 1 and 3 oral polio vaccines were developed in response to the rare but concerning risk of vaccine-derived polio associated with the Sabin-strain oral polio vaccines, and these results support the progression of these vaccine candidates to Phase 2 studies. If they continue to prove effective, new oral polio vaccines could support global efforts to boost immunization while reducing the risk of vaccine-associated polio. The study was conducted at four US centers among 205 adults with varying polio vaccination histories.A research team at Arizona State University has developed a test for multiple infectious diseases that is affordable, quick, and non-invasive, offering a new tool for improving access to rapid diagnosis and connection to treatment in low-resource settings around the world. The NasRED (Nanoparticle-Supported Rapid Electronic Detection) test uses just a single drop of blood, costs mere dollars, delivers results in only 15 minutes, and is simple and portable enough to be used in a wide variety of health care settings, including those without significant laboratory infrastructure or health care workers with specialized laboratory training—without sacrificing accuracy. Its developers say it could be a game-changer in an infectious disease outbreak scenario, as well as for diseases that are difficult and important to detect early, including hepatitis C or HIV. Specifically, the test uses tiny gold nanoparticles that are coated with special molecules designed to detect even extremely small amounts of disease-related proteins.

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. LPIXEL, the University of Dundee, and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) are partnering, with financial support from the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund, to develop a platform that uses advanced image analysis and machine learning to accelerate the discovery of novel antimalarials. Specifically, the platform will use images of stained parasite cells to better understand a compound's biological impact on the malaria parasite, providing key insights into its mode of action, a process that is usually months-long. As the emergence of parasite resistance to antimalarials poses a new threat to malaria control and elimination efforts, this new platform could help pave the way for new and effective therapies. MMV will also make the platform open access, enabling researchers around the world to use the technology to improve drug discovery efforts across a range of diseases. Results from a multi-country Phase 3 clinical trial published last week found that a shorter all-oral drug regimen was effective in some patients with pre-extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) but with mixed results. The trial tested the efficacy of 6- and 9-month regimens compared to the World Health Organization-recommended 18-month regimen, finding that while the shorter regimens had a high success rate, they did not meet the criteria to be considered at least as effective as the standard, in part because patients with extensive disease did not respond as well as those with limited disease. The trial provides important insights to guide future research into shorter drug regimens for those with drug-resistant TB. A team of researchers from Austria and Ghana recently published the results of a study testing a new pathogen detection test, finding that it was highly effective and suitable for low-resource settings. The test demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity, maintained its efficacy while being transported long distances at room temperature, and is extremely affordable. The researchers have made the test protocol open source, allowing it to be used to address critical unmet needs in low- and middle-income countries and other low-resource settings—it is already been used to develop an HIV test and a test for influenza and the virus that causes COVID-19. This research effort stemmed from challenges with implementing large-scale testing during the COVID-19 pandemic.