Arbutus Biopharma Corp ABUS

Interesting

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control released this file image of an Ebola virus.

Photograph by: Uncredited , THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Thousands of kilometres away from the epicentre of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak, a Vancouver-area biopharmaceutical company is developing a vaccine to combat the deadly disease.

Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Defense, which is providing $140 million in funding to develop the vaccine. Its therapy has proven 100-per-cent effective in protecting primates from one of five strains of the virus.

In January, the company dosed its first human clinical trial patient with its patented anti-Ebola viral therapeutic, TKM-Ebola.

Sixteen healthy subjects in the single-dose phase of the trial were found to tolerate doses well. The randomized, single-blind placebo-controlled study will ultimately involve 28 human subjects. However, a few weeks ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked for a hold on the second phase, while it reviewed protocols.

“This trial is unique,” Tekmira’s president and CEO Dr. Mark Murray said in a statement. “We are mindful of the need for this important therapeutic in situations such as the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa.”

No one from the company was made available to speak about the research.

As of Thursday 1,323 people in Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone — including local and foreign health workers — have contracted the disease, and 729 have died since the epidemic began earlier this year.

Ebola is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever, initially transmitted from infected animals such as primates, pigs and bats, and later transmitted from person to person via contact with bodily fluids.

The disease has an incubation period of two to 21 days. Symptoms include rapid-onset fever, vomiting, internal bleeding and organ failure. Up to 90 per cent of those infected die, according to the World Health Organization.

There is currently no human vaccine, although several animal vaccines have been developed.

While B.C. scientists work on a vaccine, locals are also working on the front lines in West Africa.

Victoria’s Dr. Azaria Marthyman returned to B.C. on Saturday after working with the Samaritan’s Purse aid group in Liberia.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, director of public health emergency management at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, said the doctor was “perfectly well” and “not a risk to anybody.”

Two other B.C. residents — Vancouver nurse Karen Daniels and Squamish nursing student Ian MacKay — travelled to Liberia with the organization in July.

Daniels, a Cranbrook native, has worked with the group for a decade, mainly in South Sudan.

MacKay, who also worked in Haiti and Congo, posted on Facebook July 28 that he was safe and “taking all the necessary precautions … to prevent Ebola transmission.”

Ebola was first identified in Sudan and Congo in 1976. On average, fewer than a thousand people a year, most in sub-Saharan Africa, contract it.

Prior to this year, the worst outbreaks were a 2007 epidemic in Congo resulting in 187 deaths, a 2000 outbreak in Uganda with 224 deaths and a 1995 epidemic Congo with 254 deaths.

Canada has never had a reported case.

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