Ebola: as ZMapp stocks run out doctors turn to alternative treatments

THE GUARDIAN by Sarah Boseley                                Jan, 5, 2015
LONDON --Even at the Royal Free hospital in London, the lead UK specialist centre for Ebola, doctors have limited options for treating their patients. In the end, survival may depend more on the strength of an individual’s immune system than anything medical science is currently able to do.

ZMapp, a drug made by the small biotech company Mapp Biopharmaceutical in San Diego, attracted enormous attention when it was given experimentally to the first Americans and Europeans to be infected with Ebola. Seven people received it, including the British nurse Will Pooley and two Americans, Kent Brantly, a doctor, and missionary Nancy Writebol, all of whom recovered. Two others, however – a Liberian healthcare worker and a Spanish priest – died. This compassionate use of a drug that had successfully treated monkeys in trials proves nothing at all about its effectiveness in humans.

ZMapp is for now out of the picture. There are no more stocks anywhere in the world...the drug consists of three monoclonal antibodies that have to be grown in the leaves of genetically modified tobacco plants, which takes months. It is also very expensive, which means that mass production for Africa is unlikely.

Two other drugs have entered trials in west Africa – brincidofovir, made by Chimerix in the US, and favipiravir, made by Fujifilm in Japan. These are both antiviral drugs that have been used against flu. Trials have also begun of the use of blood plasma containing antibodies against Ebola from survivors whose immune systems have fought off the disease. All these trials are in the very early stages, however, and it will take six weeks or more before scientists have any indications as to whether the drugs or the plasma are working.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/05/ebola-zmapp-stocks-run-out-doctors-turn-alternative-treatments