Vaccines

The company producing the new Ebola treatment for an FDA-approved test suddenly pulled out of Liberia, leaving researchers confused.

BUZZFEED                by Hayes Brown                                                                               Feb. 13, 2015

...An FDA-approved trial of the drug brincidofovir, meant to treat rather than prevent Ebola, had already begun in Liberia’s capital of Monrovia when Chimerix, the company that produced the drug, pulled out of the trial at the end of January. The clinical trial partners decided to end the trial on Feb. 3.

Peter Horby, who led the University of Oxford research team conducting the study, called the drug company’s decision “a bit abrupt.”

A woman is injected by a health care worker as she takes part in an Ebola virus vaccine trial in Monrovia Abbas Dulleh / Via AP

REUTERS   by Sharon Begley                                                                                      Feb. 10, 2015

NEW YORK --An experimental Ebola drug from Sarepta Therapeutics Inc protected six of eight lab monkeys injected with the virus, scientists from the company and the U.S. Army reported on Tuesday.

The drug, called AVI-7537, joins ZMapp from Mapp Biopharmaceutical and a compound from Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp as the agents shown to cure non-human primates given otherwise-lethal injections of Ebola virus.

The ZMapp and Tekmira drugs protected 100 percent of lab monkeys in studies, giving them a possible edge. But, unlike those, Sarepta's drug has been formally tested in healthy human volunteers at high doses and caused no serious side effects.

Sarepta's $300 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop drugs against Ebola and the related Marburg virus ended in 2012 due to government funding cuts. The study was completed just before then but not published until the current Ebola outbreak increased interest in the drug....

BLOOMBERG  Commentary      by Charles Kenney                                              Feb. 3, 2015
...Without good surveillance, disease threats can fester undetected until they are considerably harder to contain. At the moment, countries simply declare they have the capacity to meet global standards and the WHO takes their word for it. There should be a system of independent review, backed up with international assistance and support to ensure that all countries really do have the capacity to track infectious disease outbreaks and control their spread across borders.

....the global health research system is primarily driven by market pressures. The cost of bringing a drug through the regulatory processes to market averages around $1 billion. That's a big reason why pharmaceutical companies would rather spend money on treatments for the diseases of the rich than for conditions that largely affect people in countries like Liberia...

There are two approaches to deal with that problem: lower the cost of drug development and increase the market for the products that emerge. ...

To increase demand, governments can club together to create an "advanced market commitment": If a drug developer produces a vaccine or therapy that meets certain standards, donors precommit to buy it in bulk....

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS NEWS by Jayalaksmi K      Feb. 2, 2015

A common virus that infects billions at some point of their lives is believed to deliver some protection against other deadlier viruses like HIV and Ebola.

David O'Connor, a pathology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, found the genetic fingerprints of the virus GBV-C in the records of 13 samples of blood plasma from Ebola patients.

While six of the 13 people who were co-infected with Ebola and GBV-C died, seven survived.

Combined with earlier studies that have hinted persistent infection with the virus slowed disease progression in some HIV patients, researchers think the virus could be beneficial.

"We're very cautious about over-interpreting these results," O'Connor told NPR. He is now waiting to get a bigger sample, to see if there really is a strong connection between GBV-C infection and survival.
Read complete story.