IRIN examines an 18-month project in Kenya testing a maize treatment aimed at controlling “a deadly fungus, aflatoxin,” which has the potential to cause cancer, immune system suppression, growth retardation, liver disease and death among the “literally billions of people in the developing world” who are chronically exposed to the fungus.

In an Al Jazeera opinion piece, the first in a two-part series, Khadija Sharife, a journalist and visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society, examines how multinational drug companies control markets.

This report, titled “The Future of the U.S. Army and Navy Overseas Medical Research,” from the Center for Strategic & International Studies lays out the research, conclusions, and recommendations from “a year-long, independent examination of the U.S. Army and Navy overseas medical research laboratories,” which “stand at the intersection of…

SciDev.Net reports on the 7th World Conference of Science Journalists, taking place this week in Qatar, where participants discussed how the number of clinical trials in developing countries is surging despite legal and ethical frameworks often not being in place.

Researchers from Scynexis Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C., and Anacor Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto, Calif., sponsored by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, on Tuesday reported in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that a new experimental drug kills the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness in mice and will enter human clinical trials this year, ScienceNOW reports (Leslie, 6/28).

“Annual funding for research and development (R&D) in the fight against malaria has quadrupled over 16 years, generating the strongest pipeline of potential treatments in history, according to a report [.pdf] on Tuesday,” Reuters reports (Kelland, 6/28).

“Research evidence has undoubtedly been crucial in formulating countless global health policies which have saved many millions of lives,” but “at the same time, we believe there are several common fallacies about its ‘real world’ application,” Gavin Yamey and Richard Feachem of the Evidence to Policy initiative write in an Evidence-Based Medicine perspective.

The Center for World Health and Medicine, the University of Missouri-St. Louis Medicinal Chemistry Group, and the Institute for One World Health have joined forces “to develop safe and effective anti-diarrhea drugs … aimed at preventing the massive water and electrolyte secretion that occurs in severe diarrhea,” which causes dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, the primary causes of death from diarrheal diseases, the St. Louis Beacon reports.

After four teenage girls involved in a clinical trial in India testing vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV) died last year, the study “threatens to have a dual legacy: inflaming unfounded fears about a lifesaving vaccine and raising new questions about the management of medical research in the country,” Nature News reports.

An inexpensive, non-invasive cheek swab saliva test for dengue has been developed by researchers in Singapore and is undergoing multi-center evaluation, SciDev.Net reports.