💉EuBiologics transfers tech to Biovac; Evaxion collaborates with Afrigen Biologics; Egypt cooperates with Africa on health
#434 | Suppression > expression; Known devil > aspartame; Making promises > keeping them
Hello there. Welcome back to The Kable for our last edition this week. We have a quick recap of all the reports and declarations that emerged from the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, but first, Nigeria’s The Guardian has a detailed feature on the need for the country to make the most of its local API manufacturing capacity. With a high forex burden, Nigeria reportedly loses N1 trillion (~$1 billion) annually by importing APIs from India and China.
South Korean biotech EuBiologics has inked an MoU to supply its meningococcal pentavalent vaccine and transfer tech to produce finished doses with South Africa’s Biovac. EuBiologics has also entered a tech transfer agreement and raw material supply contract with Russia’s Nanolek for a meningococcal quadrivalent vaccine.
A phase 1 trial of an HIV vaccine candidate has started enrolling participants at 6 US and four South African sites. The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases supports the study, scientifically and financially. BMGF and Vir Biotechnology are also providing funding.
Saudi Arabia intends to build a $133 million vaccine manufacturing facility in a joint venture with the Vaccine Industrial Company. The facility will create about 150 jobs and produce seasonal flu, Covid, chickenpox, rotavirus, pneumococcal and meningitis vaccines, aiming to export 20% of them.
The Egyptian Drug Authority, meanwhile, has launched the Egyptian-African Health Alliance to “open channels of cooperation with African countries”, unify pharmaceutical standards, and strengthen South-South cooperation. The alliance includes medical service provision, scientific training, telemedicine, and more.
Scotland has pledged up to £2.5 million to the Health4Life Fund, coordinated by the WHO, UNDP, and UNICEF. Over the next five years, these funds will tackle NCDs and drive Global South-led action to strengthen health systems.
Some promising updates are streaming in from Novo Nordisk. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is committing up to DKK 950 million (EUR 127 million) to enter the fight against chronic diseases. The investment will be used to set up a sophisticated facility for developing and upscaling of cell therapies for human testing. Also, Novo Nordisk has extended its long-term partnership with UNICEF to fight childhood obesity. The pharma giant will commit $8 million to this mission over the next three years.
Denmark’s Evaxion Biotech has announced a collab with South Africa’s Afrigen Biologics to develop a novel mRNA vaccine against gonorrhoea, for which no vaccine currently exists.
Big Pharma has been leveraging the benefits of AI in drug discovery and development, significantly reducing the time and money needed to bring a drug to market. Reuters interviewed pharma executives, drug regulators, AI firms, and public health experts to get an overview of the landscape, including the risks and the possibilities.
Singapore’s Quadria Capital is looking to raise up to $1 billion for its largest fund to tap into healthcare growth in South and Southeast Asia.
The US FDA has published new draft guidelines detailing alternative tools to assess pharma production facilities in pending applications. These methods were earlier used by the agency during the pandemic when lockdowns and social distancing came in the way of their traditional methods.
A new Centre for Global Development report has shed light on the need for coordinated global action against antimicrobial resistance, especially in LMICs. The report details a political recommendation and operational guidance to increase the availability of essential antibiotics, increase incentives for producing new ones, and minimise overuse and misuse.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is pretty eager to get their chips in human brains, but this recent Wired investigation and this complaint filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine with the SEC last year should hopefully make patients not-so-eager to sign up. PopSci tells it all.
Falling woefully short so far has not affected the world’s ambitions to attain the SDGs. Global leaders have recommitted to redouble their efforts on their behind-schedule progress. The UN Sec-Gen has also proposed a $500 billion annual stimulus package, but scientists aren’t impressed with leaders’ abilities to make promises, which are far superior to their abilities to keep them.
And finally, speaking of promises that can’t be kept, world leaders have approved a(nother) political declaration on universal health coverage, even as the WHO and the World Bank reveal appalling stagnation in our progress so far.
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The Week That Was
As the 78th session of the UN General Assembly opened this week, the SDG Summit drove global leaders to reassess our progress on the path towards our 2030 goals. Naturally, reports of all sorts emerged this week.
On Monday, we told you of a multi-agency report, United in Science, which was coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation. The report systematically examines the impact of climate change and extreme weather on the SDGs; we appear on track to achieve only 15% of the SDGs. It calls for improved weather predictions to boost food production, integrating epidemiology and climate information to anticipate climate-sensitive diseases and more to fast-track our path to achieving the SDGs.
Also on Monday, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria released its 2023 Results Report, showcasing promising post-pandemic progress against the three diseases. Still, there are several challenges keeping the world off track from achieving the 2030 targets of ending these diseases. The usual suspects of climate change and conflict are to blame: debt, erosion of human rights, and deepening inequities within and between countries.
And yet another report. Released by UNICEF ahead of the UNGA, it shows that we are off-pace to meet two-thirds of child-related indicators under the SDGs. At our current snail’s pace, only 60 countries i.e. 25% of the world’s child population will have met relevant targets by 2030.
Come Tuesday, we had - you know it - more reports. WHO and the World Bank jointly released a report that claims progress in providing people with affordable and accessible healthcare is stagnant.
On the polio front, a recent report critically highlighted the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, or GPEI's overoptimistic public narrative and repeated delays; GPEI had first aimed to eliminate polio by 2000, though 23 years later, we're still not there. Of course, GPEI has made commendable progress, achieving a 99% reduction in polio cases. Yet, today's largest threat comes paradoxically from the vaccines themselves. In an interview with Science, Tom Frieden, part of the independent monitoring board and former CDC head, stresses that while polio eradication has been arduous, it remains an imperative mission.
Thankfully, we had a bit of a break from reports on Wednesday. Remember how last year the team at Google DeepMind released AlphaFold, a program to predict protein structures? The same team has now crafted this super smart AI program, AlphaMissense to predict whether certain genetic changes, called missense mutations, might be harmful or just harmless quirks in our DNA. They've put all these predictions in a free online catalogue.
Over in Africa, Novo Nordisk entered into an agreement with Aspen Pharmacare to manufacture human insulin in South Africa. The partnership, disclosed at the UNGA, will see Aspen produce 16 million insulin vials next year, supporting 1.1 million diabetes patients, up from the current reach of 500,000 in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2026, this production is expected to satisfy the insulin needs of 4.1 million people on the continent.
Yesterday, it was back to high-level meetings and pointless political declarations. At the UNGA, global leaders made a 'historic' commitment to strengthen international cooperation, coordination, governance, and investment for pandemic prevention, preparation, and response. The declaration recognised the need for Member States to conclude negotiations on the Pandemic Accord and continue making targeted amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) by May 2024. But Health Policy Watch threw light on criticisms of the declaration. The text is mostly rhetorical. And real commitments? What are those? Moreover, the political declaration is not binding on Member States. Doctors Without Borders, too, is disappointed at the declaration’s failure to make ambitious commitments and acknowledge the inequities affecting global health.
And finally, to end on a non-UNGA note, a Reuters report suggests that India will make it mandatory for drugmakers to audit their raw material and packaging material suppliers at least annually.
Newsworthy
Assessing Africa’s planned vaccine capacity. Investments in African vaccine manufacturing have surged in recent years. However the many planned projects risk duplicative investments in some areas and under-investment in others due to disparate and uncoordinated efforts. This is far from ideal for the long-term sustainability and commercial viability of manufacturing projects on the continent. So the Africa CDC, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and PATH have come together to examine Africa's current and planned vaccine manufacturing capacity. They’ve found that if all plans for vaccine manufacturing expansion in Africa came to fruition, there would be capacity to formulate, fill, and finish more than twice the projected vaccine demand in 2030. On the other hand, antigen-producing capacity would be well below regional production targets even if all expansion plans are realised. Also, there aren’t sufficient commercial capabilities or tech transfers in place. This analysis highlights the strengths, gaps, opportunities and recommendations in the ecosystem, helping funders better coordinate and prioritise their efforts and investments. Read their entire briefing paper here.
(CHAI)
Climate change makes everything worse. We’ve established that time and again. Now the World Economic Forum (WEF) has published an article about how climate change is deeply linked to human health. A combination of international cooperation and local community-based interventions can break that link, which experts explored at the WEF’s Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2023. This article highlights the threats presented in Malawi, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other Asian countries, highlighting interventions to break the climate-health nexus.
(WEF)
Glenmark Pharma lets go of its life sciences business. In India, Glenmark Pharma is ready to say ta-ta to 75% of its stake in its life sciences unit Glenmark Life Sciences (GLS), which makes APIs and was listed in 2021. The buyer in question is detergent maker Nirma, who will shell out Rs 56.52 billion (~$679.84 million). What does Glenmark intend to do with the money? Pay its debt of about Rs 46 billion. This sale also frees up the drugmaker to focus on its branded drugs business (under which it sells skin and respiratory medicines), invest in product development, and prepare for market expansion in Latin America, parts of Europe and India. Meanwhile, Nirma will also make an open offer to GLS shareholders to acquire another 17.33% stake in the company. Glenmark will still hold a 7.84% stake in the entity.
(Glenmark)
R&D
All roads lead to immune suppression. Covid research has uncovered the convergent evolution of different virus strains, with different evolutionary pathways leading to the virus gaining the same superpower. The SARS-CoV-2 virus’ spike protein might have stolen the spotlight, but it’s not the sole actor doing all the heavy lifting in Covid infections. Scientists from UC San Francisco’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute and their collaborators from other institutes are going after ORF9b, ORF6, and other members of the supporting cast, building on the 50+ studies they published through the pandemic. In this new study, published yesterday in Cell, they’ve shed light on the virus’ evolution and called for a combination approach to take on all its immune-suppressing proteins. Similar to the approach taken with HIV, the study authors think a cocktail of therapies will be the key to dealing with the virus as we go forward.
(Cell)
Silkworms make spider silk. Spider silk is a pretty great green alternative to nylon, Kevlar, and other synthetic fibres, but as luck would have it, it isn’t exactly cake to farm spiders (they tend to eat their friends for lunch). Enter CRISPR, the solution to all our problems. Researchers have used CRISPR to genetically engineer silkworms to produce pure spider silk for the first time ever. This silk can tolerate a stretching force of 1,299 megapascals and absorb 319 megajoules/m3 of energy under impact – this means that it is 1.3x stronger than nylon and 6x tougher than Kevlar. This method could be critical to scaling the production of tough fibres with high tensile strength. Why should you care? 100% spider silk produced by silkworms can be used as surgical suturing threads; experiments have shown that it helps wounds heal better than traditional nylon threads.
(Matter)
What can’t AI do? AlphaFold has been revolutionary for the field of protein science, allowing life scientists to predict the 3D shape of proteins with high accuracy. Last year, an amazing 215 million proteins were modelled using the platform. All these data sources conceal insights into the evolution and functioning of proteins, but uncovering these insights is a task in itself. Researchers at the University of Basel have successfully attempted decryption; they constructed an interactive network of 53 million proteins with high-quality AlphaFold structures and identified 290 new protein families and a new protein fold. This resource is extremely valuable for theoretical predictions of unknown protein families and functions at scale. Their Protein Universe Atlas is available as an interactive web resource and stands to be useful across life sciences innovations, from basic to applied research.
(Nature)
The Kibble
Why express when you can suppress? People quite like to talk about their anxieties sometimes, don’t they? Some forms of therapy also aim to improve mental health by having patients recall difficult experiences rather than push them away. But this doesn’t always work, as recent research (and possibly your personal experience) suggests. Suppressing some thoughts, especially negative ones about things you have no control over, can be pretty darn useful. The experiment in question saw a 16% reduction in PTSD symptom severity after participants were trained to suppress negative thoughts. Even three months after the intervention, these beneficial effects persisted. Of course, this isn’t to say that any and every negative thought should be suppressed, but maybe it’s worth considering that indulging morbid thoughts about the future may not be the best way to get past them.
(Science Advances)
Kicking the Diet Coke habit. Kable Editors, First Kablers, and all other Diet Coke fiends - lend me your ears eyes. Scientists in the US have found that even low levels of aspartame resulted in learning and memory deficits which were also passed down to offspring. At least in male mice. Last year, the same researchers also found that consuming aspartame was linked with anxious behaviours in mice and their progeny for two generations. We don’t yet know if any of these findings translate to humans; exploratory research about the effects of aspartame on the brain is still ongoing. Until we know more, we sure aren’t keen to substitute our known devil, good ol’ sugar.
(Scientific Reports)
Bottom line
Wildfire pollutant exposures soar. Are climate change and air pollution the great equalisers of our time? Not quite. Wildfires have been increasing in frequency and severity recently, courtesy of climate change. These fires have terrible effects on human health – effects that haven’t been well-studied on a global scale. A recent study has focused on global daily landscape fire-sourced (LFS) PM2.5 and surface ozone concentrations from 2000 to 2019. The highest concentrations of pollutants were observed in Central Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and Siberia. In low-income countries, pollutant concentrations were four times higher than those in wealthy countries. Between 2010 and 2019, 2.18 billion people were exposed to at least one day of substantial LFS pollution every year; on average, each individual had 9.9 days of annual exposure. Overall, this ML-based study has plugged a critical gap, especially for areas which don’t have their own monitoring stations.
(Nature)
Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn't want you to see this.
Every Friday, we relax our paywall so you can see for yourself the value of paying ₹500/month (or ₹4500/year) for a concise download of the day’s top news and events at the intersection of human and animal health, climate change and environmental science. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber.