Vancouver, B.C., Canada, February 2, 2023 – Platform Life Sciences, a high impact Clinical Research Organization, with the mission to modernize clinical trials on a global scale, has signed a key agreement with GreenLight Biosciences to support their Phase I clinical trial, GLB-003, for a novel mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 in Rwanda – that today has been approved by the Rwanda FDA.

Over the past 3 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected health systems in sub-Saharan Africa that were already highly burdened by other infectious diseases such as HIV. 1 Although substantial progress has been made in reducing new HIV infections globally, Africa is still disproportionately affected, accounting for two-thirds of all people living with HIV. 2 The global target to achieve 95% of HIV testing, treatment, and controlled viral suppression by 2030 requires nuanced and innovative ways of understanding HIV transmission dynamics at the national, regional, and subregional levels, and availability of new treatments and preventive strategies on a broad scale.

Recurrent disease outbreaks caused by a range of emerging and resurging pathogens over the past decade reveal major gaps in public health preparedness, detection, and response systems in Africa. Underlying causes of recurrent disease outbreaks include inadequacies in the detection of new infectious disease outbreaks in the community, rapid pathogen identification, and proactive surveillance systems. In sub-Saharan Africa, where 70% of zoonotic outbreaks occur, there remains the perennial risk of outbreaks of new or re-emerging pathogens for which no vaccines or treatments are available. As the Ebola virus disease, COVID-19, and monkeypox outbreaks highlight, a major paradigm shift is required to establish an effective infrastructure and common frameworks for preparedness and prompt national and regional public health responses to mitigate the effects of future pandemics in Africa.

Nature Medicine asks leading researchers to name their most anticipated clinical trial for 2022, from CRISPR and psilocybin to oncolytic viruses. Despite the ongoing disruptions from COVID-19, 2021 saw some major results from clinical trials. 2022 looks to be a bumper year too, so Nature Medicine asks leaders in their field what they think will be the most important clinical trial results in the coming year.

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool and will likely augment many processes in biopharma — but it’s still early days, and hype is rampant.