In an effort to curb the spread of the Ebola virus especially in the hardest-hit countries in West Africa, leading drug manufacturers are starting to work together, obviously setting aside competition at a time when a viable vaccine is absolutely needed.
According to a Reuters UK report on Wednesday, October 22, Johnson & Johnson, which is working on an Ebola vaccine in the United States has already reached out to GlaxoSmithKline, which is also creating another vaccine, this time in the United Kingdom. If their collaboration works, they can produce more than a million of these doses by next year.
J&J also expresses the need of having many drug makers participating in the development of such vaccine since some of these currently in the pipeline may not be effective. The chief executive of GSK Andrew Witty, meanwhile, mentioned that they will be meeting with some Geneva experts to determine the processes that will ensure the creation and delivery of these vaccines will not encounter any supply bottleneck.
So far, GSK and another company called NewLink Genetics have already begun their clinical trial while J&J is set to schedule their human tests by January 2015. The World Health Organization hopes to begin giving vaccines to West Africa and health workers in the front line also in January next year.
Although Ebola has been around since the 1970s, there's no known vaccine to fight it. Some patients including Nina Pham, a nurse who worked with Thomas Eric Duncan who later died of Ebola in Dallas Health Presbyterian Hospital, received a special serum with antibodies from an Ebola survivor. The serum injected into the patient's bloodstream may hopefully encourage the body to produce the same antibodies to fight the virus. Drugs such as ZMapp had also been given to some health workers.
Today the need for a cure is paramount considering that in the worst-case scenario, Ebola may spread to 10,000 more people each week by December.
