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A coalition of governments and charities has committed $460m to speed up vaccine development for Mers, Lassa fever and Nipah virus. They are asking funders at the World Economic Forum Davos for another $500m. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) aims to have two new experimental vaccines ready for each disease within five years. New vaccines usually take about a decade to develop and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa, closely followed by the Zika epidemic in Latin America, exposed just how "tragically unprepared" the world is for new outbreaks.
Nipah virus particle
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the founding members of Cepi, said: "Before the 2014 outbreak we only had very small Ebola epidemics that were in isolated communities that we were able to control. "But in the modern world with urbanisation and travel, 21st Century epidemics could start in a big city and then take off the way Ebola did in West Africa. "We have to be much better prepared." Ebola killed more than 11,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The arrival of the Zika virus in Brazil in 2015 has left thousands of children brain-damaged. During both outbreaks, there were no treatments or vaccines to prevent people getting sick. Scientists scrambled to resurrect research on these obscure diseases.
'Guessing game'
Effective vaccines were eventually developed during the Ebola outbreak, but only as it started to wane. Nevertheless, governments, scientists and regulators all came together with unprecedented speed, and managed to expedite the notoriously complex development and regulatory processes. Cepi wants to continue that momentum and develop vaccines for other viruses so that by the time an outbreak hits, experimental vaccines are ready to be sent to affected areas for large human trials that can establish how effective the vaccine is. Lassa, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) and Nipah virus are "top of the list" of 10 priority diseases that the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as potentially causing the next major outbreak. Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general of the WHO, said: "Besides the known threats - such as Ebola and others - there are also all those viruses that are known but are thought to be very benign. "They could mutate and become more dangerous for humans. "Then there are the things that are completely unknown to us at the moment," said Dr Kieny.
The lottery of viruses that could hit us next makes it very difficult to plan for the future. Pharmaceutical companies aren't lining up to invest in these little-known viruses because there is no commercial market for them. However, some have come on board with this new alliance, including GSK and Johnson and Johnson. "We've got lucky so far," said Jeremy Farrar, because recent outbreaks haven't become airborne. But he said a far more contagious version of an Ebola like virus could emerge. "I could cough it over you today and you could cough it over someone tomorrow and it could spread very quickly. "That puts the world in a very vulnerable place."
Vaccines for three deadly viruses fast-tracked - BBC News
MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, is a SARS-like viral infection first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012 that has caused deadly outbreaks in the Middle East as well as sporadic cases around the world. Despite more than five years of waves of infection, no effective treatment or vaccine has been developed against MERS, which has a 35 percent case fatality rate and has so far killed at least 740 people worldwide. More than 80 percent of MERS cases have been reported in Saudi Arabia, according to the World Health Organization.
Muslim pilgrims wear surgical masks to prevent infection from respiratory virus known as the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
In research published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, scientists found that human antibodies called SAB-301 generated in so-called transchromosomic cattle — animals with human DNA incorporated into their genome — were safe in healthy volunteers. The antibodies also persisted for more time than the MERS virus typically remains in the body, the study found, with antibodies still detected in bloodstream after 90 days. This points a way ahead for the antibodies — which offer immunity against an invading infection — to be tested in further trials in people infected with MERS, the researchers said. "This is the first study to show the safety and immune effects of a potential treatment for MERS," said John Beigel at Leidos Biomedical Research, who co-led the U.S. government-funded study. "The data from our study suggest that SAB-301 is safe, and further research into the treatment is warranted."
Passengers wearing masks as a precaution against the MERS virus make their way after they got off a train at a subway station in Seoul, South Korea
The idea of using human antibodies has developed in recent years in a variety of severe and emerging diseases, including flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), MERS and Ebola. Blood plasma harvested from people whose immune systems have successfully fought the disease contains the right antibodies and can be given to other patients to help their immune systems fight the virus. But harvesting human plasma is not always easy or swift when a new disease emerges, so scientists turned to the idea of transchromosomic cattle as a way of manufacturing specific antibodies in larger amounts.
A scientist is testing a sample from the people, who is recently returned from South Korea and suspecting of MERS infection, inside a Sample Preparation lab, at the National Institute of Health Department of Medical Sciences in Nonthaburi.
Transchromosomic cattle have human DNA that codes for human antibodies incorporated into their genome. To make SAB-301, they were injected with a part of the MERS virus, stimulating their immune systems to produce antibodies against it. The antibodies were then extracted from the cattle's blood and purified. "The process of creating antibody treatments by harvesting antibodies from human donors is slow and often small-scale," said Beigel. "However, the cattle-produced antibodies could be created as soon as three months."
Human Antibodies Made in Cows Could Be Developed to Treat MERS
