MountainMom.........in response to your question I'll give you my 2 cents worth.....
First off Chimerix's Brincidofovir is not a an Ebola drug or vaccine per se. Michelle Berrey, CEO of Chimerix, stated before this started that Brincidofovir(their lead product and is an antiviral drug used to treat numerous viruses) may or may not work. It was given to Duncan a couple of days before he died and was also given to the NBC cameraman I believe. This was in conjunction with the NIH & CDC in the early spring....
ZMapp's drug is made up of 3 monoclonal antibodies that have been humanized through some genetic engineering. From Wiki " The components are humanized monoclonal antibody c13C6 from a previously-existing antibody cocktail called "MB-003" and two humanized mAbs from a different antibody cocktail called ZMab, c2G4 and c4G7.[2]
ZMapp is manufactured in the tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana in the bioproduction process known as "pharming" by Kentucky BioProcessing, a subsidiary of Reynolds American
It was used early in the crisis on a doctor and missionary and both survived. From my understanding, it is a laborious process to manufacture and they have only produced 3 doses as far as I know.
All I know about Tekmira's drug is that it has some bad side effects and is very painful....
Newlinks drug from their site: The vaccine is directed at the protein which forms the outer coat of Ebola virus and has been shown to induce antibodies that neutralize the virus...
I believe it is a small molecule/linker approach...
Most of these are based in Imunotherapy and all have a chance to add to the helpful research that will be needed to beat ebola...imo. Most successful therapies these days are combination approaches and this should prove true with Ebola too, I believe.
Inovio had great preclinical data on Ebola over a year ago, I believe but Dr. Kim decided not to pursue it without some outside funding. Obviously, that has changed and now will do a phase 1 internally with their subsidiary GeneOne......
I believe Inovio's platform is so cutting edge that it makes it difficult for the powers that be to get behind Inovio's product. But that is changing and I believe they are in discussions with the FDA,NIH & NIAID as we speak......
We shall see........thanks
johan
