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'Money well spent today means less money spent tomorrow' on HIV/AIDS

This Lancet Infectious Diseases editorial responds to the Global HIV/AIDS Response 2011 progress report (.pdf) launched by WHO, UNICEF, and UNAIDS on November 30, writing that the report "contains much good news on treatment and prevention, but the gains made by past efforts are jeopardized by the ongoing global financial crisis and dwindling funds."

21 Dec 2011

Coordinated efforts needed to eliminate blinding trachoma

Elizabeth Kurylo, communications manager with the International Trachoma Initiative, describes the International Coalition for Trachoma Control's plan "to eliminate blinding trachoma, one of the seven neglected tropical diseases targeted by END7, ... called 2020 INSight: The End in Sight," in this post on the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases' "End the Neglect" blog.

21 Dec 2011

Cholera education campaign launched in Somali capital

Health ministry officials on Friday launched a cholera education campaign in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, "which aims to educate at least one person in every household on preventing the disease and what to do when symptoms occur," Agence France-Presse reports.

21 Dec 2011

CNN examines HIV clinic in Myanmar

CNN examines an HIV clinic in Myanmar, where the disease "is little understood" and "many of the patients here have nowhere else to go after being ostracized by their families."

21 Dec 2011

University of Western Ontario receives FDA approval to begin SAV001 HIV trial

The first and only preventative HIV vaccine based on a genetically modified killed whole virus has received approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start human clinical trials.

21 Dec 2011

Vacc-4x nasal vaccine can effectively treat HIV

Thirty years after AIDS was first described, there is still no effective vaccine against the HIV virus. Worldwide, roughly 33 million people are HIV-positive. Researchers are working to find out whether a HIV vaccine developed by a Norwegian biotech company can be administered nasally.

21 Dec 2011

UC Davis professor monitors world's hot spots for signs of emerging diseases

It's not a matter of if a worldwide pandemic will strike but when, say experts like veterinarian and epidemiologist Jonna Mazet, a professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology in the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. That's why Mazet, who leads an early warning pandemic system called PREDICT, monitors the world's hot spots, or "hot interfaces" for signs of emerging diseases.

21 Dec 2011

More evidence emerges to support that progenitor of syphilis came from the New World

Skeletons don't lie. But sometimes they may mislead, as in the case of bones that reputedly showed evidence of syphilis in Europe and other parts of the Old World before Christopher Columbus made his historic voyage in 1492.

21 Dec 2011

University of Oxford scientists develop new candidate malaria vaccine

A new candidate malaria vaccine with the potential to neutralise all strains of the most deadly species of malaria parasite has been developed by a team led by scientists at the University of Oxford.

21 Dec 2011

WHO approves three Mylan ARV therapies to treat HIV/AIDS

Mylan Inc. today announced that its subsidiary Mylan Laboratories Limited has received approval for three antiretroviral (ARV) therapies used to treat HIV/AIDS under the World Health Organization's (WHO) Prequalification of Medicines Programme. The products include:

20 Dec 2011

SCYNEXIS, MMV assemble Malaria Box of 400 compounds with antimalarial activity

In a bid to catalyse malaria and neglected disease drug discovery, MMV and SCYNEXIS, Inc. have assembled a Malaria Box of 400 carefully selected commercially available compounds with antimalarial activity and will provide it to researchers at no cost.

20 Dec 2011

Study examines relationship between malaria, salmonella infection

People with malaria are more prone to developing bacterial infections, particularly from salmonella, and "researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine [LSHTM] have discovered that the increased vulnerability to salmonella infections is a side effect of the body's attempts to protect itself from the damaging effects of the malaria infection," according to an LSHTM press release.

20 Dec 2011

Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline to increase sales of pneumococcal vaccines through GAVI

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are increasing their sales of reduced-cost pneumonia vaccines to developing countries through the GAVI Alliance "by more than 50 percent, marking the scale-up of an international program to protect millions of children," Reuters reports.

20 Dec 2011

Three-dose artesunate therapy effective in treating children with malaria

A shorter anti-malaria treatment is as effective in treating seriously ill children as the standard regimen, according to new research. Researchers have shown that three doses over two days of the drug artesunate are as effective in killing the malaria parasite in the blood as five doses over three days.

20 Dec 2011

Grand Challenges Canada, Gates Foundation announce grants to develop portable diagnostic tools

The Canadian government-funded non-profit Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "have invested around $32 million in the discovery and development of new and improved diagnostic tools to help health workers in developing countries, with the aim of speeding up treatment and saving lives," IRIN reports.

20 Dec 2011

OneWorld Health to become PATH affiliate

"PATH and OneWorld Health (OWH) on Friday announced that OWH will become an affiliate of PATH, bringing its drug development expertise and experience in neglected infectious diseases to bear on PATH's mission of improving global health through innovation," according to a PATH press release.

20 Dec 2011

Eculizumab protects children from severe Shiga toxin-associated HUS

A physician and researcher at the Sainte Justine University Hospital Center (Sainte-Justine UHC), a University of Montreal affiliate, saved the life of a child and, by doing so, became the first to find a new use for a drug in the fight against deadly E. coli bacteria.

20 Dec 2011

Routine criminal prosecutions for HIV nondisclosure should be abolished, say experts

Routine criminal prosecutions for not disclosing HIV status should be abolished, write three HIV/AIDS experts in an article in CMAJ.

20 Dec 2011

Yissum introduces novel technology for manufacturing an anti-malaria drug in tobacco

Combating malaria is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals described in the United Nations Millennium Declaration signed by all UN members at the year 2000. A key intervention to control malaria is prompt and effective treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapies.

19 Dec 2011

Atox Bio to advance AB103 Phase 2 study with $3.25M financing

Atox Bio, developer of therapeutics for diseases mediated by an excessive inflammatory response, today announced that it has raised $3.25 million in an initial closing. The investment was co-led by Esperante and a private US-based investor and will be used to advance AB103, currently in phase 2 clinical studies for the treatment of Necrotizing Soft Tissue Infections (NSTI).

19 Dec 2011