Ebola Drug ZMapp: This DARPA Program Could Get It To Africa

DARPA May Have A Way To Stop Ebola In Its Tracks
Health workers, wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), are reflected in a mirror before entering a high-risk area on September 7, 2014 at Elwa hospital in Monrovia, which is run by the non-governmental French organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders -- MSF). US President Barack Obama said in an interview aired on September 7 the US military would help in the fight against fast-spreading Ebola in Africa, but warned it would be months before the epidemic slowed. The tropical virus, transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, has killed 2,100 people in four countries since the start of the year -- more than half of them in Liberia. AFP PHOTO / DOMINIQUE FAGET (Photo credit should read DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images)
Health workers, wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), are reflected in a mirror before entering a high-risk area on September 7, 2014 at Elwa hospital in Monrovia, which is run by the non-governmental French organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders -- MSF). US President Barack Obama said in an interview aired on September 7 the US military would help in the fight against fast-spreading Ebola in Africa, but warned it would be months before the epidemic slowed. The tropical virus, transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, has killed 2,100 people in four countries since the start of the year -- more than half of them in Liberia. AFP PHOTO / DOMINIQUE FAGET (Photo credit should read DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

Last week, as experts assembled at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva to discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there was a glaring absence in the public discourse: an accurate assessment of the U.S. government’s capacity to produce ZMapp, one of the experimental drugs under discussion for speeded approval. The drug, a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies that has now been used in the treatment of at least seven Ebola patients, five of whom survived, has the potential to be an exceptional therapy against the virus. But the world’s supply is currently exhausted, and production of even several dozen additional doses of the drug remains months away.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot