More Vaccines Needed For Tropical Diseases, Study Reveals

By Lori Clapper

There has been quite a clamor recently about the record-setting outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, which has killed over 2,200 people to date and spurred numerous strategies in an effort to control it, including a new vaccine and other experimental drugs.

While Ebola continues to be an unmet health need that needs attention, a paper released last week from Science Translational Medicine, calls attention to more common diseases that are in dire need of new vaccines, without making headlines like Ebola has.

The list includes the following:

Malaria impacts 207 million people every year. And even though a malaria vaccine is “technically feasible,” nobody has ever attempted to manufacture a vaccine to protect people against a parasite, according to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative. It would certainly take increased resources – both human and monetary – to make it happen. However, a number of technical and scientific barriers need to be overcome to malaria vaccine development. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has partnered with a number of African research centers for its malaria vaccine that is currently in Phase 3 clinical studies. The expected endpoint for the study is December 2014.

Tuberculosis: Currently, India, China, and South Africa account for the largest cases of TB in the world. Mortality statistics in South Africa show that TB is the leading overall cause of natural death, according to a report on ioL SciTech.

GSK also has a novel TB vaccine, M72/ASO 1E, which is set to be tested on more than 3,500 healthy adults in South Africa over the course of four years. If it proves effective, the vaccine could act as a booster to the childhood BCG vaccine, which could turn around the spread of TB if it is proven to be effective.

Influenza cases number four million each year. Currently there are five Trivalent flu vaccines, which protect against two influenza A viruses (an H1N1 and an H3N2) and one influenza B virus.

However, a new Quadrivalent shot to guard against four strains of the flu will be making an appearance in about half of flu shots administered across the U.S., the Trib Live reported.

“That's projected to increase every year for the next couple years. We're making major strides toward converting all our vaccines to quadrivalent,” said Dr. David Greenberg, VP for scientific and medical affairs at vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur in Monroe County, Pennsylvania.

If a more powerful shot, like the quadrivalent, is available, it would mean more protection, especially for vulnerable people such as pregnant women and diabetics. The four-strain shot is among 13 flu-vaccine products on the market today.

Dengue: Earlier this month, Sanofi announced that its experimental vaccine against dengue fever demonstrated about 60 percent efficacy in its second large clinical trial. This outcome could pave the way to introduce the world’s first inoculation against the disease. The drug company also said the vaccine reduced the risk of getting dengue by 60.8 percent during its research of nearly 21,000 children from several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

HIV: Today, there are 94 active clinical trials for HIV medicines and vaccines in the USA. Of those, 43 have not yet started recruiting patients or have recently begun seeking participants. Therapies being investigated involve attachment inhibitors, gene modification, and inducing T cell responses, among others, according to a PhRMA-sponsored white paper by Boston Healthcare Associates.

There are 16 vaccines in development, including a therapeutic vaccine designed to induce responses from T cells that play a role in immune protection against viral infections.

Big pharma investments into these diseases are miniscule as compared to cancer or heart disease — around $500 million a year out of an industry total of more than $130 billion, Deutsche Bank estimated. But the tides could be changing, as industry R&D spending on diseases including Ebola, malaria, dengue, tuberculosis, and other parasitic worms has grown roughly 20 percent per year between 2008 and 2012, the Business Insider reported. However, the U.S. government still funds more than two-thirds of R&D in the field.