“Takeda Pharmaceutical's dengue vaccine Qdenga has been approved by India's drug regulator, making it the first such vaccine to be cleared in the country, the Japanese drugmaker's ​India unit said on Monday.

Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease and one of the fastest-spreading ‌vector-borne illnesses globally. The World Health Organization reported a record 14.4 million dengue cases and 11,201 deaths worldwide in 2024, including 232,425 cases and 233 deaths in India…

Reported dengue cases in India rose 11-fold ​in the past two decades, according to Takeda Biopharmaceuticals India.

Qdenga, designed to protect against all four dengue virus serotypes, is indicated for the prevention of dengue in children and adults aged 4 to 60 years, the company said.

In a late-stage trial, the vaccine, approved ​in 43 countries so far, showed an efficacy of 80.2% against confirmed dengue cases one year after the second ​dose.

It also showed 90.4% efficacy against dengue-related hospitalizations after 18 months, meeting the secondary end-point of the study, according to the ‌company.”

From Reuters.

“Serum Institute of India said on Thursday it would manufacture an experimental tuberculosis vaccine under an ​agreement with the Gates Medical Research Institute, in what is ‌likely to be the first new TB shot in more than 100 years if approved.

The novel vaccine candidate, M72/AS01E, has been in development for two decades and ​is currently in a late-stage clinical trial.

Serum Institute plans to invest ​more than $100 million to scale up manufacturing capacity and prepare ⁠for future vaccine supply, pending approval, the company said.

Under the agreement, ​Gates MRI, founded by the Gates Foundation, will transfer the technology and ​know-how needed to manufacture the vaccine antigen and enable large-scale production, Serum Institute said.”

From Reuters.

“China has broken ground on what developers say is the country’s first production line for AI-assisted personalised tumour vaccines, raising hopes for millions of new cancer patients every year – a disease that ranks as the nation’s second-leading cause of death.

By October, Beijing-based Likang Life Sciences is expected to complete a new drug research and manufacturing centre in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, with a total investment of about 110 million yuan (US$16.1 million), according to the district government.

The facility will house cell therapy research laboratories together with a production line of the company’s flagship product, LK101, a personalised cancer vaccine that analyses each patient’s tumour DNA to pinpoint the specific genetic mutations driving the disease. With AI, the company said the procedure could be completed in a day.”

From South China Morning Post.

“The arrival of the RTS,S malaria vaccine was a landmark moment; Ghana, Kenya and Malawi were the first countries in the world to offer it to their populations as part of a pilot project launched in 2019, and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended it for wider use in 2021.

Early studies indicated that the vaccine had a 13% drop in all-cause mortality, and a comprehensive new study of the last four years of vaccine roll-out published in The Lancet has confirmed this figure. That translates to roughly one in eight deaths prevented…

The study tracked 158 clusters across the three countries, with 79 areas introducing the vaccine in 2019 and 79 serving as comparison areas that received it later. Surveillance was built on a network of more than 26,000 local reporters who notified researchers of child deaths in their communities, followed by home visits to confirm details.

The findings carry particular weight because of how the study was designed. Clusters were randomly assigned, baseline characteristics were balanced, and coverage of other interventions, including bed-nets, routine vaccines and care-seeking for fever, remained similar across implementation and comparison areas throughout the four years.

This means, say the researchers, that the drop in deaths can be  ‘confidently attributed’ to the vaccine itself rather than to other shifts in malaria care.”

From Gavi.