Mystery Ebola virus serum
manufactured by San Diego
firm - By MONTE MORIN


This article is related to:


Ebola, Diseases and Illnesses, National Institutes of Health, Liberia, U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Sanjay Gupta, Samaritan's Purse


AUGUST 4, 2014, 3:34 PM


The serum given to Christian aid
workers infected with the
deadly Ebola virus was
manufactured using plants
The experimental Ebola virus
serum was created by a San
Diego firm, Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.


An experimental serum given to
Christian aid workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus was manufactured by a San Diego pharmaceutical firm using plants, the company and U.S. health authorities disclosed Monday.
As Dr. Kent Brantly fights for his life in a special containment unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, and missionary Nancy Writebol prepares to be evacuated from Liberia on Tuesday, details began to emerge about a mysterious treatment they were given shortly after they became infected.


The drug, which was produced by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., is called ZMapp and has not been evaluated for safety in
humans, according to a company
statement.


"As such, very little of the drug is
currently available," said company
President Larry Zeitlin in a statement. The drug is a cocktail of three "humanized" monoclonal antibodies that are manufactured in a group of fragrant plants or bushes known by the genus
name Nicotiana.


Monoclonal antibodies fight viral
invaders by locking onto antigens - projections on the surface of a virus that are used to cling to and then enter target cells in the body.
In the case of the Ebola virus, these antigens project like spikes from the virus' long, spaghetti-like body.


Once these antigens lock onto the surface of a cell, the virus enters and uses the host cell's
machinery to begin mass-producing copies of itself. Antibodies, which can be
produced by the immune system or administered as a drug, thwart the ability of antigens to lock onto target cells.


A CNN report that the drug had
prompted a "miraculous" recovery and that Brantly's condition improved within an hour after treatment was greeted
with skepticism by longtime Ebola virus researchers.



"I would be ecstatic if Larry's producthelped save these people, but I also need to be extremely cautious," said Thomas Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of
Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
"To say the whole thing cleared up in an hour, that doesn't happen in reality," Geisbert said. "That's like something that happens in a movie."



Ebola virus infection typically begins with flu-like symptoms, such as achy muscles, fever and malaise. As the disease progresses, patients suffer bleeding, rashes, vomiting and diarrhea. If the
patients do not receive proper medical care, they can suffer deadly organ failure from the loss of fluids.


Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the
National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Disease, said the
company had manufactured only three "courses" of the drug, and that two of them were provided to the American patients.
"This was the first time it was put into humans, because all the previous work was done on animals and the results had
been encouraging," Fauci said.
Fauci said it was hard to say whether or not the medication had been effective.




"If you ask Sanjay Gupta, he says the effect was dramatic, but when you have one patient, you have nothing to compare it to. You can't make a definitive statement," Fauci said. Fauci's agency provided a statement
Monday describing how the drug came to be administered to Brantly and Writebol.
The Christian aid organization
Samaritan's Purse had contacted U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials in Liberia to discuss the status of experimental treatments they were aware of, the statement said.



Those officials referred the aid group to a National Institutes of Health scientist who was assisting in the Ebola outbreak response in West Africa. "The scientist was able to informally answer some questions and referred them to appropriate company contacts,"
the statement read. "She was not
officially representing NIH and NIH did not have an official role in procuring, transporting, approving or administering the experimental
products."



Though some have criticized the
decision to transport Brantly and
Writebol to the U.S. for treatment, fearing that it would cause the disease to spread here, officials say it is "extraordinarily unlikely."
Proper hospital procedures will keep the virus isolated, they say, and afford the two patients care that will enable their bodies to fight off the virus.There is no vaccine or cure for Ebola. The
virus has a mortality rate as high as 90%, depending on the strain. It is transmitted through bodily fluids, but not through the air, experts say.



www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ebola-serum-20140804-story.html