AusAID pledges AUS$2.5M “shot in the arm” to Aeras for TB vaccine R&D
ROCKVILLE, Md. (August 19, 2013)— The government of Australia has expanded its role in the global battle against tuberculosis, providing a grant of AUS$2.5 million to fund the quest for an effective vaccine against a silent killer that infects one out of three people worldwide.
The one-year grant to Aeras, the world’s largest non-profit biotech dedicated to advancing TB vaccine research and development, will contribute to the effort of the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) to combat diseases of poverty.
“AusAID’s generous support does more than fund life-saving research,” said Tom Evans, MD, CEO of Aeras. “In announcing new programs in global health, Australia recognizes the need to take action against a deadly, airborne disease that is confounding global efforts to halt it and enacting an enormous economic burden on health systems globally. We know that vaccines represent the one intervention that will work for the long term in preventing the spread of disease.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), TB has become more dangerous than ever with the recent emergence of drug resistant strains—some so powerful that they are virtually untreatable. Every year, tuberculosis kills 1.4 million people, and nine million people are newly diagnosed. Right now approximately 12 million people around the world are suffering an active infection.
While Australia has not had to confront a heavy burden of TB in its population, other countries in the Asia-Pacific region have. Among them are China, with an incidence rate 12 times that of Australia, and Papua New Guinea, with a rate 57 times that of Australia.
The devastating scale and consequences of the multi-drug resistant tuberculosis emergency in Papua New Guinea were highlighted in Australia in June when freelance journalist Jo Chandler wrote about her own diagnosis with the disease, apparently contracted while in PNG's Western Province in late 2011 reporting on the epidemic for The Age. Chandler's article compares the privilege of her timely, comprehensive treatment, as a citizen of a country with one of the world's best health systems, with the conditions endured by TB sufferers she met in PNG, many of whom cannot access the drugs, treatment and support they desperately require to survive.
Aeras CEO Evans noted that a vaccine that could provide long-term protection would save thousands of lives in countries like PNG that face significant logistical challenges in treating disease. There has been US $650 million invested globally over the last decade in TB vaccines. But in 2011 treatment and control of TB cost US$4 billion and by 2015, according to the World Health Organization’s 2012 TB report, it could cost up to US$8 billion a year.
“The ultimate game-changer in the battle to eliminate TB would be improved vaccines for adolescents and adults that protect against developing and transmitting disease,” Evans said.
A modeling study presented earlier this year by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, suggests that such a vaccine—for adolescents and adults—could alleviate up to 67 (50-83) million cases and 8 million (5-12) deaths by 2050 in the 22 countries where the tuberculosis burden is highest.
Source: Aeras
