After weeks of discouraging news of the Ebola outbreak, the first reports of patients possibly fending off the disease have arrived: Two Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, aid workers who were in Liberia with Samaritan's Purse, received an experimental “secret serum” and have showed progress in their conditions, reported CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

But what exactly is the secret serum? It’s a question practically everyone’s been asking. The answer: Something the National Institutes of Health and Mapp, the biopharmaceutical firm that manufactured it, are largely keeping mum about. As far as we know, Gupta has the most details regarding the serum’s effect and what it does. As he put it in his CNN report:

The medicine is a three-mouse monoclonal antibody, meaning that mice were exposed to fragments of the Ebola virus and then the antibodies generated within the mice's blood were harvested to create the medicine. It works by preventing the virus from entering and infecting new cells.
In other words, the serum, named ZMapp, is a cocktail of antibodies, all proven to have effectively battled Ebola out of mice, that have been extracted for further testing. But before the serum got there, the outbreak occurred, resulting in its use now. Even without FDA approval, Gupta writes, the serum may have been given under the Agency's "compassionate use" regulation, allowing it to be administered in a time of emergency.




Source :

http://news.yahoo.com/why-did-two-americans-secret-serum-fight-ebola-201716501.html