California Ebola researcher seeks more money through crowdfunding
By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California-based immunologist in charge of an international consortium developing new anti-Ebola drugs has turned to Internet "crowdfunding" for extra money needed to speed up the research, she said on Monday. The group led by Erica Ollman Saphire, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, helped formulate the experimental ZMapp serum that was used to treat two American aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia and recovered. Saphire has posted an appeal on the website www.crowdrise.com/CureEbola seeking at least $100,000 in contributions for purchasing equipment that will allow researchers to more quickly analyze blood samples of antibodies from survivors of the hemorrhagic fever. As of Monday, nearly $13,000 had been raised since the crowdfunding appeal was posted on Friday. The current Ebola epidemic, the worst on record, has killed more than 4,000 people this year, mostly in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The Scripps-led consortium was established with a $28 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, but the rapidly growing scope of its work has placed additional demands on limited resources. Specimens are being sent to Saphire's lab from around the world, "but the number of samples outpaces the ability of her current equipment to process them," the website said in a message. "With the Ebola virus, we're in a race," Saphire was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times. She told Reuters that 25 laboratories in seven countries were providing antibody samples. An institute spokesman said researchers are seeking to improve on ZMapp and to develop alternative treatments. ZMapp is a mix of three antibodies designed to bind to proteins of the Ebola virus, preventing it from replicating and triggering the immune response of infected cells. The compound was tested in monkeys, but there were no human trials of the serum before it was rushed to Atlanta to treat U.S. aid workers Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol at Emory University Hospital after they became infected in Liberia in July. The two were ultimately cured, but doctors are unsure whether the ZMapp actually helped them. The virus has been known in the past to kill as many as 90 percent of its victims. But nearly 40 percent of patients from the current outbreak have survived without pharmaceutical treatment, according to Dr. Thomas Geisbert, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Texas in Galveston. ZMapp was co-developed by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. (Editing by Eric Walsh)
