Necessary, Yes..but.. North Carolina & Texas working to produce EBOLA Drug ZMAPP

[misterhighwasted]

A Texas site is preparing to manufacture the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, says Robin Robinson, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Robinson adds that Novartis’s (NYSE: NVS) vaccine facility in North Carolina is a possible second site to make the drug. Those sites were developed previously in partnership with a U.S. government effort to establish response centers capable of manufacturing drugs and vaccines in an emergency.

(snip)
ZMapp, developed by San Diego-based biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical, is a biological drug. The antibodies that spark the immune system are produced in tobacco plants, then extracted from the plant to make the drug. A Kentucky subsidiary of Reynolds American grew the tobacco plants that made the monoclonal antibodies in ZMapp. Robinson says BARDA is now working with a response center at Texas A&M University to bring the tobacco drug-making technology from Kentucky to Texas

(snip)
“They would respond by making that product, then helping us through clinical trials, then taking it to where it’s needed,” Robinson says.

Robinson, who is also deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, was in North Carolina last week for a Novartis event marking the first shipments of seasonal flu vaccine from the company’s Holly Springs, NC, vaccine plant. He says new vaccine production technology that Novartis has implemented to make flu vaccines more quickly could also, if needed, be used to make biological drugs such as ZMapp.

http://www.xconomy.com/raleigh-durham/2014/09/30/zmapp-ebola-drug-production-set-for-texas-possibly-north-carolina/

[misterhighwasted]

1. however, as one commentor on the above article points out..

..". If the production efficiency is similar for the ZMapp MAb, the cell culture facility would currently only be able to make about 210 Ebola treatments a year, based on the dosage used in the published Nature article (~12 grams/3 dose treatment for an 80kg human). Although it is a start, it is still not enough and more needs to be done."

[uppityperson]

2. thank you. The disease process and treatments are quite interesting.

Over active immune system reaction, clotting, bleeding, all quite something

[misterhighwasted]

3. It is interesting and best we focus on the situation from a treatment pov & development of a vaccine

The world is so rich with technology & people who will engage every bit of themselves in the effort to develop medicines, as did Jonas Salk in his day.
I suggest they be all included in ending this deadly horrific virus.
EBOLA needs to be brought to a controllable state.

[kestrel91316]

4. Contact tracing and isolation combined with a vaccine ASAP are what is going to stop this thing.

Expensive, hard to manufacture, pie-in-the-sky treatments of the ill will not.

[misterhighwasted]

6. Absolutely. Its the pie-in-the-sky for profit that will delay what is needed

Appreciate their efforts but with Texas & North Carolina leading the race now, I wonder as 2 the honesty of this deal.
Perhaps I'm just tainted by previous "burn jobs..bottom line and all.

[Marrah_G]

5. it's seems to be working

The problem is that until more can be grown, which takes time, it won't be widely available. Also since Ebola outbreaks are rare and usually small, there wasn't a chance to test in in humans until now.