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Three Ebola Vaccines in Development Amid Growing Outbreak Fears
Three new vaccines are being developed to tackle the rare species of Ebola that has already killed nearly 250 people. The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), which is working on one vaccine, said the outbreak was threatening to be the worst ever. The University of Oxford and the pharma company Moderna are also researching vaccines against the Bundibugyo species. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which is providing funding to each group, said “every day counts.”
There are now more than 1,000 suspected cases in the DR Congo with nine confirmed cases in neighbouring Uganda. There is growing concern this outbreak — which was detected only after it had spread in a conflict zone with limited healthcare resources — could reach the size of the largest ever Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16. Then, nearly 29,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died.
Dr Mark Feinberg, head of IAVI, said: “I think this is clearly threatening to be as severe an outbreak as that, if not even worse, and development of a vaccine, and other countermeasures, is clearly a priority.”
Russia to Develop Vaccine Against New Ebola Strain
Russia possesses its own technological foundation to create a vaccine against the new strain of the Ebola virus, according to an announcement by the Russian Ministry of Health. “Russia is perhaps the only country that has so-called vaccine reserves. Among other things, we now have a foundation that has already been established for a vaccine against the new Ebola strain,” the ministry’s statement emphasized. It was noted that the existence of such reserves allows for the rapid development of medications to prevent various diseases.
The effectiveness of Russian vaccine GamEvac-Combi was proven in practice during the previous Ebola epidemic. In 2017–2018, a large-scale placebo-controlled trial was conducted in the Republic of Guinea. About 2,000 healthy volunteers participated in the trials (1,900 received the vaccine, and 100 received a placebo).
The data from these trials were officially published in peer-reviewed international journals, including Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics and through extensive reports in Frontiers in Immunology. The drug demonstrated an excellent safety profile. On the 42nd day after vaccination, the seroconversion rate (the appearance of protective antibodies) reached 96.3%. A pronounced cellular and humoral immune response persists for at least a year.
Moderna and Other Groups Get $60 Million to Develop Ebola Vaccine
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Global health organisation CEPI will give roughly $60 million to Moderna and two other groups to accelerate the development of shots against Ebola Bundibugyo, the deadly virus that has swept through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations was one of the early investors that helped to develop a vaccine at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Richard Hatchett, head of CEPI, told Reuters on Monday it was possible to get Ebola Bundibugyo (BDBV) vaccines ready for trials within a couple of months. There are currently no approved BDBV vaccines or treatments. Hatchett said the promise of vaccines on “a not infinitely distant horizon” should help to start conversations about who would buy them and fund any roll-out. But he cautioned, however, that vaccine development can be unpredictable and the challenging security situation in eastern Congo would make trials complex.
There have been 282 confirmed cases in Congo, including 42 deaths, and around 1,100 suspected cases, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Another nine cases have been confirmed in Uganda, including one death.
Dispute Grows Over Home Monitoring of Hantavirus Passengers
U.S. officials are prepared to allow some of the 18 American passengers exposed to a unique strain of hantavirus to leave a special quarantine facility in Nebraska as early as Monday. But they are still negotiating with state officials over how closely the passengers should be monitored for the remainder of the 42-day quarantine after returning home, according to three people familiar with the response.
The three people, like others interviewed for this account, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. White House officials have been pushing for aggressive monitoring at home, including the stationing of an armed guard in front of the person’s house 24/7, the people said.
But public health officials have pointed out that such an approach conflicts with best practices and weakens the trust-based rapport needed for people to participate fully in monitoring programs and to seek care if it is needed.
The Superbug Spill: When Medicine Goes Rogue
At 25, Vanessa Carter was in a devastating car crash in Johannesburg. It broke every bone on the right side of her face and set her on a years-long journey through multiple reconstructive surgeries. Six years on, Carter received a prosthetic implant to reconstruct her cheekbone. Perhaps the worst of her ordeal was over. But one day, she noticed some pus seeping from her face. It was an infection. And for nearly a year, it wouldn’t go away.
“I was taking antibiotics, I was seeing my doctors, but nobody could give me answers,” she told DW. “And all this time this bacterial infection was basically eating away at the tissue on my face.” The culprit, it turns out, was MRSA — methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus — one of a growing number of superbugs against which antibiotics have stopped working.
Antimicrobial resistance — when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve to defeat the drugs designed to kill them — has been identified as a major global health challenge by the UN. By 2050, drug-resistant superbugs could claim 10 million lives annually. If left unchecked, they could cost $412 billion (€352 billion) annually by 2050and cut $3.4 trillion dollars from global GDP per year over the next decade.
One reason behind their spread is the mis- or overuse of antibiotics in healthcare. Another is antibiotic pollution in the environment.
An Experimental GLP-1 Pushes the Limits of Weight Loss. There Are Risks.
Eli Lilly this month unveiled startling new data that showed an experimental weight-loss drug caused people with obesity to shed, on average, 28 percent of their body weight — a substantial step up in potency from the existing crop of GLP-1 medicines. But that breakthrough also is prompting some doctors to urge caution.
In interviews, doctors warned that using a drug to shrink your body that much will require close medical management — much more than the level of monitoring many people are now getting when taking drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound. If approved, the drug called retatrutide would be most appropriate for people that need to lose a lot of weight, they said, those whose “body mass index” (a calculation using height and weight) is over 40.
Patients on average lost 70 pounds after 80 weeks at the highest dose in the treatment’s phase 3 clinical trial. And instead of hitting a plateau, which is common for existing drugs, they kept losing pounds. Patients who stayed on the drug for 104 weeks lost 30.3 percent of their body weight.
Inhaled Insulin Now FDA-Approved for Kids 6 and Over With Diabetes
Taisie Seigrist, a 15-year-old track and cross-country athlete in Oklahoma, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes five years ago.
“It was a big life shift,” Taisie’s mom, Jennifer Seigrist, told ABC News. “[She] spent a week in the hospital getting her blood sugars down and learning everything we could learn in a week, and … it’s been a roller coaster.”
Learning to manage her new diagnosis meant Taisie needed to learn how to dose and inject herself with insulin, a necessary but painful process.
“I kept getting bruises, and so it really hurt,” said Taisie, one of the 364,000 kids and teens living with diabetes in the United States, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Two years ago, Taisie’s doctor told her about a clinical trial testing the safety and effectiveness of inhaled insulin, an option only FDA-approved for adult use at that time.
Smart Drug That Strips Cancer Cells of ‘Invisibility Cloak’ Can Shrink Tumours by 30%, Trial Shows
A smart drug that stops cancer cells “hiding” from treatment can shrink tumours by at least 30% in six of the world’s most common forms of the disease, early trial results show.
While immunotherapy treatments have improved survival rates for many patients, their effectiveness can stall or fail when tumour cells hide and then spread. Researchers in Oxford have developed a drug designed to stop cancer cells concealing themselves from the immune system, allowing immunotherapy treatments to identify and destroy them.
In a trial spanning the UK, France, Spain and Australia, 83 patients with cervical, bladder, liver, bowel, lung or head and neck cancers were given the experimental drug, GRWD5769, alongside the immunotherapy treatment cemiplimab. Researchers, led by the Christie NHS foundation trust in Manchester, England, found that tumours shrank in 26 patients. Of those, 15 experienced tumour reductions of at least 30%.
