Thai researchers' breakthrough

A THAI medical school has achieved a breakthrough in the treatment of the deadly Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever (EHF), with the potential for commercial distribution within one year from now and boosting the world’s hope of combating the deadly disease that has already claimed thousands of lives in Africa this year.
At a press conference, Mahidol University’s Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital yesterday announced that this breakthrough was the therapeutic antibody for EHF.
“If we can produce it in a huge volume, we are willing to send it to patients in Africa,” the faculty’s dean, clinical Prof Dr Udom Kachintorn, said. At this point, the therapeutic-antibody production is still on a laboratory scale.
He said a new drug could be used in humans infected with diseases like EHF even when it had not yet completed the process of testing on animals and humans.
Prof Dr Wanpen Chaicumpa, who led the research team on this medical breakthrough, said her faculty would inform the World Health Organisation about this success in the hope that further cooperation would speed up development at the next step.
She said the antibody treatment was set to be tested on monkeys and humans in the next few months at a private laboratory, arranged via her institute’s cooperation with the University of Florida in the United States.
Wanpen said the therapeutic antibody created by her team had many special characteristics. “For example, it is very small, is able to enter infected cells and is thus accessible to the intracellular virus proteins. It should then be able to help stop the virus production in the infected cells,” she said, adding that her faculty had already patented the innovation.
Prof Ruengpung Sutthent, deputy dean of research at the same faculty, said one of the major challenges for further development of the antibody treatment was the limited laboratory capacity.
The research team now hopes the government will financially support further research on Ebola antibody development. It expects further research to require about Bt1 billion budget.
The team, for example, points out that it will need a better-equipped lab to conduct further research.
In regard to antibody treatment trials on animals, the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital plans to collaborate with Siam Bioscience Co. This biopharmaceutical company, partly owned by Mahidol University, has the capacity to produce bioproducts at manufacturing scale and to generate more antibodies under good manufacturing practice standards for further animal trials.
Meanwhile, the WHO said two experimental vaccines for EHF, being developed by GlaxoSmithKline and the Public Health Agency of Canada, look promising and have supplies ready to start human clinical trials.
Trials will be conducted on healthy people in the UK and the US, the WHO said, and would evaluate the safety of the vaccines and their ability to generate an immune-response in humans.
At present, there is no cure for Ebola, which is spread by contact with blood and bodily fluids of those infected. The disease is normally treated by keeping patients hydrated, replacing lost blood and using antibiotics to fight infections.