Drug company Tekmira awarded US$140 Million to research Ebola

The treatment of Ebola and research for the same has moved the US Department of Defense to award Tekmira, $140 million dollars to research the treatment for the quickly spreading viral disease.

News reports on CNN also indicated that the National Institute of Health in the US also revealed that the Ebola virus had possibly mutated and that efforts were underway to fast track the development of a vaccine.

To date the disease has killed more than 1400 people with around 1300 still ill in West Africa alone with an unrelated Ebola virus turning up in the Congo, according to officials.

“This is an important milestone for Tekmira and our TKM-Ebola program. Receiving a Fast Track designation from the FDA supports our work to advance the development of this therapeutic as quickly as possible. Our leadership in developing anti-viral therapies has been supported by our collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense, which is funding the development of TKM-Ebola,” said a spokesman for Tekmira.

Reports suggest that the market for Ebola is small but given the “state of international emergency” declared by the World Health Organization and the rapid contagion of the drug, the importance of research and development in finding a treatment is critical.

The company is said to have started its first human trials last month while the NIH has said that human trials for a vaccine will start in September. Thus far, many health care professionals have fallen ill, with two repatriated to the US who have since recovered and one British nurse is still hospitalized in the UK after having been flown back from West Africa.  Tekmira’s drug is called TKM-Ebola and medical officials are asking whether it can be used in the current outbreak for “compassionate” reasons.

Recently the WHO agreed that ZMapp could be used on sick doctors and health care officials in West Africa but the supply had run out. To date, the two US doctors who recovered are still being monitored since there is no actual link to suggest that their recovery was as a result of the use of ZMapp.

“My impression is that TKM-Ebola is not advanced enough to use on a compassionate basis,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile Ben Neuman, a virologist for the UK’s University of Reading said to the IB Times that Ebola is more likely to get funding from the UN or US Government because their focus is on “the public good”.

Many still believe that releasing TKM-Ebola would still be beneficial to patients and those in research and development.

“Deploying TKM-EBOLA in the current outbreak would have benefits for both the drug developer and patients. You could argue that it is ethically more troubling testing a new compound in healthy volunteers when actual patients are available,” According to Dirk Haussecker, an independent consultant in virology.

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