ZMapp, the serum given to two Americans recovering
from Ebola at an Atlanta hospital, appears promising,
but will take two to three months to make less than 100
doses. But U.S. health officials have eased safety
restrictions on a different experimental Ebola drug that
showed promise but was put on hold due to possible
side effects.
The potentially life-saving serum given to two
Americans with Ebola will take months to manufacture
in only a "modest" quantity, but a different therapy
got a shot in the arm Thursday.
A Canadian drug company said U.S. health officials
have eased safety restrictions on an experimental
Ebola drug that showed promise in primate testing but
was placed on full clinical hold due to possible side
effects in healthy human volunteers.
The new FDA easing could enable doctors to use the
drug, called TKM-Ebola, on infected Ebola patients,
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals said Thursday.
“We recognize the heightened urgency of this
situation and are carefully evaluating options for use
of our investigative drug within accepted clinical and
regulatory protocols,” the president of the Vancouver
company said.
There are no approved treatments for Ebola, a virus
that has killed some 1,000 people in Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Guinea and Nigeria since March in what’s
being called the biggest outbreak of the disease on
record.
The serum given to two American aid workers who
were airlifted out of Western Africa appears
promising, but production is a problem.
“It takes two to three months to make less than a
hundred doses. We have to do better than that," Dr.
Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told
the Daily News Thursday.
“And we don’t even know if it works yet. People are
confused. There are claims it’s a miraculous cure. We
don’t know. It might be dangerous. We need to
balance the risk with compassion,” he said.
In a best-case scenario, the San Diego company that
owns the ZMapp serum could begin trials in West
Africa in a matter of months, he said.
“When they do distribute it, there will have to be
strong ethical and scientific guidelines in place,” he
said. “There should be an ethical committee to balance
need and fairness. The governments of those
countries likely will be involved.”
Developed by San Diego-based Mapp
Biopharmaceutical, the ZMapp serum is made inside
the leaves of tobacco plants and was never tested on
humans until doses were given to Nancy Writebol and
Dr. Kent Brantly.
Though Writebol and Brantly have shown early signs of
success, they’re still undergoing treatment in a
special isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in
Atlanta, and the therapy’s overall toxicity and long-
term effects are unknown.
Fauci’s comments came as some questioned why the
experimental treatment was never offered to any
African victims.
“This shows simply that white patients and black
patients do not have the same value in the eyes of
world medicine,” said Nouridine Sow, a sociology
professor at the Universal Institute of Guinea.
A spokesman for the Kentucky company that makes the
compound for Mapp said production is ramping up.
“(We) are working with Mapp Biopharmaceutical and
various governmental agencies to increase production
of ZMapp, but that process will take several months,”
Kentucky BioProcessing spokesman David Howard told
The News Thursday.
Howard said his company makes the serum by
“infecting” a tobacco plant with certain proteins. The
plant serves as a “photocopier,” producing more of
the proteins for targeted extraction, purification and
compound manufacturing, he said.
“The bottom line is that we’re planning to increase
production and seek drug approval protocols, but we
have to work with government agencies and other
interested parties to move the process forward," he
told The News.
One prominent aid worker accused the U.S. and Europe
of ignoring the epidemic when Ebola first reemerged
in Guinea in March.
“That the world would allow two relief agencies to
shoulder this burden along with the overwhelmed
Ministries of Health in these countries testifies to the
lack of serious attention the epidemic was given,” Ken
Isaacs with Samaritan’s Purse said in testimony
before a House committee.
It’s estimated the current Ebola outbreak won’t be
contained for at least three to six months, Dr. Tom
Frieden, head of the CDC, said.
“It will be a long hard fight,” Frieden told a
congressional committee Thursday.

nydailynews.com/life-style/health/cdc-issues-highest-level-alert-ebola-outbreak-article-1.1895154#YMceUFKdpKiYJ4hq.97

Nigerians/Africans be anchoring their hope of a possible cure for EBOLA on the West since 1976!

Smh

anything is better than nothing...

Lets speed it up please.......