The incredible potential of M72
Sharing a moniker with both the most recent world tour for rock band Metallica – and a category of anti-tank armaments – M72 is also the name of a promising tuberculosis vaccine candidate with the potential to fundamentally transform future efforts to curtail and eradicate the disease.
In a piece for the Telegraph, Ben Farmer and Sarah Newey write about the significance of the M72 field trial taking place in South Africa:
“The trial is now being funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome at a cost of around £436m ($550m) and GSK is providing technical expertise. AHRI in March began enrolling 1,000 participants over the next year, targeting parts of northern KwaZulu-Natal province with high infection rates.
The trial will soon ramp up elsewhere and will include up to 20,000 participants, including people living with HIV, at up to 60 trial sites in a total of seven countries – South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, Indonesia and Vietnam.”
The authors go on to explain that even if the trial shows the vaccine offers only 50% protection, tens of millions of lives could still be saved in the coming decades.
All decked out
Writing for modern home design publication Dwell, Elizabeth Yuko offers a compelling and detailed history of deck chairs, including a close examination of the influence tuberculosis patients had on the evolution of these essential furnishings.
“In Europe and the U.S., sanatoria were typically located far away from the pollution of rapidly industrializing cities—in the mountains, by the sea, in the desert—giving patients access to fresh air while they rested. Unfortunately, outdoor furniture of the era wasn’t designed to accommodate ill individuals spending entire days in repose. By the 1880s, most tuberculosis patients in Europe and the U.S. were spending most of their days "curing" outdoors in nonadjustable reclining lounge chairs made from bentwood or cane.
Some doctors took it upon themselves to create modified versions for their patients, like Dr. Peter Dettweiler, who opened his own German sanatorium in 1876, and designed adjustable cushion-topped bed/chair hybrids. Dr. Lawrason Brown, the resident physician at the Saranac Lake sanatorium from 1901 to 1912, used Dettweiler’s chair as a model to design his own version, the Adirondack Recliner.”
Yuko goes on to explain how these chairs were later tweaked and deployed on the decks of ocean steamliners, and then were modified again for use in private homes. The entire article is worth checking out.
BCG breakthrough
A groundbreaking new study, led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, demonstrates the promise of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, the only TB vaccine in use currently, in protecting type 1 diabetics from COVID-19 and other diseases.
In a press release from MGH, lead researcher Diane Faustman explains:
“Individuals with type 1 diabetes are highly susceptible to infectious diseases and had worse outcomes when they were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Published data from other investigators show mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are not very effective in this group of vulnerable patients. But we’ve shown that BCG can protect type 1 diabetics from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.”
As a next step, the research team may work with FDA officials to explore expanding access to the vaccine to Type 1 diabetic patients.
Lessons learned
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation President Trevor Mundel has a timely piece in Harvard Public Health on the potential for non-traditional drug discovery models – like the Tuberculosis Drug Accelerator (TBDA), a development program which has helped bolster TB drug development in recent years - to be leveraged in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Mundel writes:
“The accelerator model has driven rapid drug development and can be used to target other drug-resistant pathogens. Augmenting this model with cutting-edge AI and modelling tools can help focus on drugs and drug combinations that have a lower likelihood of selecting for resistant bacteria. And integrating equity and access principles from the start—by involving affected communities and local experts from high-burden countries in shaping research agendas and building responsive regulatory systems—ensures innovation will reach those who need it most.”
Mundel’s post comes against the backdrop of renewed interest in the many linkages between TB and AMR amongst global health stakeholders, including the growing threat of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB).