Experimental Ebola drug hard to mass produce

An experimental drug given to two
American patients with Ebola is made from
tobacco leaves and is hard to produce on a
large scale, a leading US doctor said on
Tuesday.
Known as ZMapp, the serum consists of three
antibodies manufactured in modified tobacco
leaves, which take weeks to grow.
It was reportedly rushed to US missionaries
Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who were
stricken with Ebola while treating patients in
Liberia.
Both have shown improvements in their health
and are now being treated in isolation at an
Atlanta, Georgia hospital.
"We cannot say right now that this drug is
particularly promising," said Anthony Fauci,
director of the National Institute for Allergy
and Infectious Diseases.
"The animal data are very good and the use
of it in the two patients is suggestive that it
may have a favorable effect, but since there
are only two patients I think you have to be
careful about making any definitive decision,"
he told AFP.
No known cure
There is no drug or vaccine on the market
against Ebola virus, which causes fever,
vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches and
sometimes organ failure and hemorrhaging.
The ongoing outbreak in West Africa is the
largest in history, having killed 887 of the
more than 1,600 infected.
As for ZMapp, which was first identified as a
drug candidate in January, there have been
no safety tests yet in humans.
"As such, very little of the drug is currently
available," the company said in a statement,
adding that is working to scale up production
as soon as possible.
ZMapp is a project of Mapp
Biopharmaceutical, Inc. and LeafBio in San
Diego, California, Defyrus Inc. in Toronto,
Canada, the US government and the Public
Health Agency of Canada.
Fauci said that the process of scaling up
production will take time.
"It is going to take several months to get even
a modest amount," he said.
"So yes, we do want to do clinical trials but
the limiting factor is the number of treatment
courses that are available."
Africans should get same chance
Noting that American aid workers who
contracted the disease in Liberia were given
an unapproved medicine before being
evacuated back to the United States, the
specialists – including Peter Piot, who co-
discovered Ebola in 1976 – said Africans
affected by the same outbreak should get the
same chance.
Piot, David Heymann and Jeremy Farrar, all
influential infectious disease professors and
respectively directors of the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Chatham
House Centre on Global Health Security, and
the Wellcome Trust, said there were several
antiviral drugs, monoclonal antibodies and
vaccines under study for possible use against
Ebola.
"African governments should be allowed to
make informed decisions about whether or not
to use these products – for example to protect
and treat healthcare workers who run
especially high risks of infection," they wrote
in a joint statement.
The World Health Organization (WHO), "the
only body with the necessary international
authority" to allow such experimental
treatments, "must take on this greater
leadership role", they said.
"These dire circumstances call for a more
robust international response," they added.
A spokesman for the Geneva-based WHO told
Reuters the United Nations health agency
"would not recommend any drug that has not
gone through the normal process of licensing
and clinical trials".
Treating patients with experimental drugs that
have not been tested in humans to determine
safety and efficacy is highly unusual.