NanoViricides Inc. (NNVC)

[changes_iv]

An airline passenger was being evaluated at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey Tuesday due to Ebola concerns, reports CBS New York. Two others were hospitalized after getting off planes into Chicago.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson Carol Crawford said the Newark passenger was "identified as reporting symptoms or having a potential exposure to Ebola" during the enhanced screening process for those arriving in the U.S. from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"(The) CDC or state/local public health officials will contact other passengers on the aircraft should it be determined that there was any risk to the other passengers of exposure to communicable disease," Crawford continued.

The Record newspaper reported that the passenger was on a flight from Liberia that went through Brussels before arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport Tuesday afternoon. The passenger was held briefly at customs at Terminal C at the airport and was then sequestered from the other passengers from the flight, the newspaper reported.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-plane-passenger-hospitalized-after-screening/

What do people infected with Ebola need? A treatment, not a vaccine. A vaccine is needed though to slowdown or stop further mutation and spread of the Ebola virus to larger populations. INOVIO SynCon, in clinical trials, may be that vaccine:

Inovio's SynCon® vaccine design process steps beyond the conventional vaccine focus of creating one vaccine for one virus strain. Apart from the general advantages of DNA vaccines, Inovio’s synthetic DNA vaccines are designed to provide a potentially game-changing distinction. Rather than creating a vaccine from one strain of a virus or cancer, we base our design on multiple strains of the targeted pathogen.

And for a treatment second generation EbolaCide:

...vaccines usually fail with the emergence of mutated viruses. And when a person develops a disease, we still need to have a treatment ~ Dr. Anil Diwan, President of NanoViricides, Inc.

Currently, there are no approved drugs or vaccines against Ebola, although some vaccines as well as some drug candidates have entered clinical trials. The limitations of vaccines, antibodies, siRNA and oligonucleotide therapies are well known. A rapidly evolving virus such as the current Ebola virus can readily mutate such that these types of strain specific or narrow spectrum drugs may be rendered ineffective. In light of the paucity of available countermeasures, recently, the WHO has announced a policy for use of experimental drugs against Ebola to expedite drug availability.

NanoViricides, Inc. now has the capability of producing sufficient quantities of an anti-Ebola drug, after it is developed, for combating current and future Ebola epidemics. The highly customizable nanomedicine cGMP capable pilot scale manufacturing facility in Shelton, CT, will be able to supply all of the nanoviricides drug candidates in quantities needed for human clinical trials.

The Company has now developed novel drug candidates against Ebola that it believes could lead to a successful therapeutic. A nanoviricide® drug is made up of two components that are chemically connected together: a virus-binding ligand that mimics the native receptor on the host cell to which the virus binds, and a backbone polymer that makes the nanoviricide “look like” the host cell surface to the virus. There have been significant developments in the elucidation of the important cell surface receptors and attachment factors of Ebola virus recently. With this new structure based information, the Company has been able to redesign its anti-Ebola ligands using the scientific in silico drug design methodology.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nanoviricides-reports-that-its-ceo-dr-seymour-will-be-interviewed-about-the-evolving-ebola-crisis-on-fox-business-news-at-9pm-edt-this-evening-2014-09-16

In other news, NanoViricides reported that the synthesis of its anti-Ebola second generation drug candidates has started. We anticipate being able to evaluate these against Ebola virus with certain of our previous collaborators. The contracts to enable such evaluation are currently in progress. The Company's nanomedicine technology enables development of drugs that directly attack the virus, in a manner that a virus may not be able to overcome despite mutational changes. This is very important for the current epidemic-causing Ebola virus strain, which has been shown to be mutating rapidly.

Fever as a standard to detect potentially Ebola virus hosts...

As for the idea about fever, we have a real concern about that because it’s potentially a very spotty standard. I personally have received information from clinicians in West Africa where potentially 20 percent or more of the patients have no fever and they die of Ebola. Fever is present most of the time, but I don’t want to see a case fall through the cracks because they didn’t present with fever. A constellation of other symptoms combined with the fact that they were in West Africa within the past few weeks should absolutely raise suspicion — even if you find another illness. We’re now finding patients who present with both malaria and Ebola, or cholera and Ebola. So we have to rule out Ebola, and that needs to be done safely. If they come into a community hospital, we have to have the expertise to handle them safely there. But they shouldn’t receive clinical care as such. At that point they need to be moved on to a regional treatment facility where they get the kind of care they deserve and where the workers are protected.

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

People, air passengers from West Africa, hotbeds of Ebola virus, must be quarantined for 31 days. I am sure Ebola virus CDC policies will evolve/change but hopefully not once it is to late to stop a highly virulent Ebola outbreak.