Biggest medical Breakthroughs in 2015

Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprise us again. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery.

While 2014 has seen the rise of many illnesses that claimed thousands of lives, 2015 is likely to see some breakthroughs in vaccines, treatments and technologies against deadly epidemics and diseases.

 

Ebola Vaccine

Trials of vaccines are being planned for early 2015 and results are expected by June. Tests are already under way on several drugs, as are trials of treatments that use the antibody – rich blood of people who have survived Ebola. According to Nature, “The blood treatments could be rolled out quickly and widely if proved effective.”

Human clinical trials have already begun in Liberia to test the effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy (CPT). Similar trials are expected to begin soon in two other places — Guinea and Sierra Leone. These three African countries have faced the brunt of the virus.

According to the WHO, the number of suspected, probable and confirmed Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea has crossed 20,000. The death toll stands at over 7,800. As of December 27, 2014, Sierra Leone has been the hardest hit with over 9,400 cases, which is almost half of all cases in the three African countries. But Liberia has the highest death toll of 3,413.

Ebola virus is a disease of humans and other primates whose signs and symptoms typically start between two days and three weeks after contracting the virus.  The initial symptoms include fever, sore throat, muscle pain and headaches.

 

Inhibitors for Cholesterol Reduction

Effective statin medications have been used to reduce cholesterol in heart disease patients for over two decades, but some people are intolerant and cannot benefit from them.

Several PCSK9 inhibitors, or injectable cholesterol lowering drugs, are in development for those who don’t benefit from statins – a class of drugs used to lower cholesterol levels by inhibiting the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase.

The FDA is expected to approve the first PCSK9 in 2015 for its ability to significantly lower LDL cholesterol to levels never seen before. Drug companies are racing to bring the cholesterol drug to market, and some may cross the finish line this year.

 

Dengue Fever Vaccine

The first vaccine against Dengue fever, a painful mosquito-borne virus common in Africa and Asia, is now very close to commercial availability after completing large-scale clinical trials this fall.

The vaccine, which is being developed by French drug company Sanofi, has shown great promise in protecting children from the disease: the vaccine cut the risk of getting the disease by 60.8%, the most recent clinical trial which involved more than 20,000 children aged between 9 and 16 from several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Kids who received the vaccine also had an 80.3% lower risk of being hospitalised for dengue compared with those who received a placebo.

Dengue fever infects as many as 400 million people yearly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sanofi officials have said they could apply for approval of the vaccine in the first quarter of 2015.

 

Antibody-drug conjugates

Compared to traditional chemotherapy, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are like targeted smart bombs in the fight against cancers.

Antibodies, which by their nature target particular types of tissues, are the perfect vehicle for cancer-fighting drugs to tag along. By pairing a cancer-fighting drug to an antibody, the drug can do its job in only the place that it’s needed, reducing the unnecessary damage to healthy tissues and organs that chemotherapy causes.

Studies have shown that this “bait and switch” strategy works to get the ADC into cancer cells, releases the toxic drug, and kills the cancer cell as it tries to divide.

Some ADCs have already been approved for clinical use – Kadcyla, a drug for people with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, was approved in 2013 – and more than two dozen are currently in clinical trials for solid tumours and blood cancers.

 

Wireless Pacemaker

The first pacemaker was implanted in 1958. Since then, doctors have continued using pacemakers connected electrically to the heart via a complex system of tiny wires. Unfortunately, those wires can break or get dislodged in the body. Their insulation can also become cracked and lead to an infection.

But, the new pacemaker is wireless, 10% of the size of a conventional pacemaker (about the size of a large vitamin), and is implanted directly in the heart and no lengthy surgery is required.

Doctors simply use a catheter in a leg vein to steer the device into the heart, a process that takes about 20 minutes. The lithium-battery-powered device lasts up to 7 years and is currently undergoing late stage clinical trials. It was first implanted into a patient in Ohio in February 2014.

 

Mobile Stroke Unit

What if there were a drug that could lessen the brain damage caused by a stroke by targeting the blood clot that caused it and breaking it up? As it turns out, there is. It’s called tPA, and the faster it’s given after a stroke, the safer and more effective it is.

Most people don’t get the drug in time, and it can only be administered via IV. Lack of access to quick treatment can have dire consequences.

Mobile stroke treatment units solve this problem by taking tPA directly to the patient. The units are essentially ambulances outfitted with everything health professionals need to treat a patient suffering from a stroke and staffed by an onboard paramedic, a critical care nurse, and a CT technologist. A broadband video link allows the onboard team to virtually contact a hospital stroke neurologist to guide treatment.

 

Hepatitis C Vaccine

Cipla and Ranbaxy are working to manufacture a cheaper version of $1,000-a-pill medicine made by US-based Gilead Sciences Inc that treats killer liver disease.

Over 130 million people in India living with life-threatening hepatitis C – a liver-destroying virus having death rates higher than people infected with HIV, especially in northeastern states — will now have an access to an otherwise unaffordable drug from March next year.

The pills will be available from March 2015.