Meet the Doctor Trying To Use the Blood of Ebola Survivors To Create a Cure 33
An anonymous reader points out this article about Dr. James Crowe, who is trying to use the blood of Ebola survivors to develop a cure. "For months, Vanderbilt University researcher Dr. James Crowe has been desperately seeking access to the blood of U.S. Ebola survivors, hoping to extract the proteins that helped them overcome the deadly virus for use in new, potent drugs. His efforts finally paid off in mid-November with a donation from Dr. Rick Sacra, a University of Massachusetts physician who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia. The donation puts Crowe at the forefront of a new model for fighting the virus, now responsible for the worst known outbreak in West Africa that has killed nearly 7,000 people. Crowe is working with privately-held drugmaker Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc, which he said will manufacture the antibodies for further testing under a National Institutes of Health grant. Mapp is currently testing its own drug ZMapp, a cocktail of three antibodies that has shown promise in treating a handful of Ebola patients."
Re: (Score:2)
Look the AC is ridiculous but so is the assertion that a Black man killed an Asian and a Hispanic/Latino because some idiot on the internet used a racial epithet.
Re: (Score:2)
So I write "nigger" and another non-white cop dies? Or do I have to call you a nigger for the effect to happen? That is about the biggest stretch I have ever seen. If I use "whitey" does another non-Black cop shoot a black kid as well?
Re: (Score:1)
Jim Crow (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as I read the overview on the front page my immediate thought was that this thread was going to be filled with racist crap
Especially given the unfortunate coincidental baggage of this doctor's name. It sounds like Jim Crow, the nickname for the policy of systematic racial segregation in the southern United States during the first half of the twentieth century. (Outside the US, you might know it as "apartheid".) James Crowe was also the name of one of the six Confederate veterans who founded the Ku Klux Klan, the others being Richard Reed, John Lester, Frank McCord, Calvin Jones, and John Kennedy. And Ebola is often thought of as a "black" disease.
Re: (Score:2)
Gee, that's really strange, because it never occurred to me that there was anything racist. And, really, there wasn't anything until your post.
Re: (Score:3)
Oops, I guess I should occasionally read AC posts. I kind of get in the habit of ignoring ACs, and I forgot they existed.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Under an NIH grant? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope. This particular cure has a long history so it is well covered by prior art. This was done back in the 70s IIRC.
The big difference is that never before have there been so many survivors or an Ebola epidemic that has run so long. Normally after a few weeks Ebola has burnt itself out. For the few handful of healthy survivors there is nobody left sick.
This time it got to the cities, letting it propagate faster than the carries could die out. Then throw in good palliative care, which is new this time around. IIRC that ups the odds of surviving from 10% to 50%.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
It was discovered in 95 by an African doctor who just guessed and saved 7 out of 8 people;
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/... [oxfordjournals.org]
something wasn't right about this though.
http://jvi.asm.org/content/75/... [asm.org]
the who was skeptical and it's only been in the last few months when it's been approved, when it was used out of desperation that the protocol has gained any traction. there are billions at stake with an EBOV vaccine, just as there was in 1948 with the polio vaccine.
"Klenner's paper (Klenner FR. The treatment of p
Stand back while he does real medicine (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I assure you, there is a profit motive to the development. The plasma donor is the one with no profit motive.
It's still good to see an approach that has yielded success built upon.
Re: (Score:3)
The donors are making about $80 per donation, which in a poor country is good money. And it is whole blood, not plasma.
Re: (Score:1)
They didn't blind themselves, the monkeys died from euthanasia not ebola, and the clinical score protocol used to decide when euthanasia was required was not published. There is essentially no evidence allowing us to distinguish between whether the drug worked vs. the researchers being biased.
"This study was not blinded"
"Animals were scored daily for signs of disease, in addition to changes in food and water consumption"
"the clinical limit for IACUC mandated euthanasia"
http://go.nature.com/oY8pGI
Re: (Score:2)
There is always profit motive. Always. It's just myopic to define profit only in terms of currency.
Getting a profit of medicinal development is still profit. Getting a profit of money is fine too. Pretending that this is being done without profit because you happen to like the form the profit takes is ridiculous.
Re: (Score:1)
ZMapp (Score:4, Funny)
I've watched way too many zombie movies to feel comfortable with the drug's name.
Re: (Score:3)
I've watched way too many zombie movies to feel comfortable with the drug's name.
Heck, never mind the name, this is the beginning of the plot of more zombie movies than I can count.
Re:ZMapp (Score:4, Informative)
You two aren't just whistlin' Dixie; that's the major plot of the Charlton Heston classic The Omega Man.
Then again, that one chick-zombie was pretty cool, so if that's a possible side-effect, then I say it's win-win.
Lets wait (Score:2)
Hats off to this guy. (Score:2)
It's nice to see somebody trying to do something without big pharma trying to rape us for billions in R&D for anything it seems nowadays.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure he was coming down on their artificial monopolies and subsidies. Treatments are worthless if you can't afford them, economics is a reality that morality cannot overcome.
Meet the Doctor? (Score:1)