Case Study (ZMapp) | biologicdrugs

Case Study-Zmapp

Description: Zmapp is the drug developed in 2014 during the outbreak of the virus Ebola in Africa. Ebola is spread through the contact of bodily fluids. It is not spread through the air.

One of the most recently developed drugs is Zmapp. This drug was created in hope that it could present a cure to the deadly Ebola virus that has killed at least 4,778 people within the timespan of the 2014 outbreak. The creators of the drug, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, published their first article on an experimental drug called MB-003, which was tested on 6 monkeys that were infected with Ebola.

Zmapp hasn't gone through a clinical trial yet. Out of desperation, ZMapp was used on a couple of American volunteers that were in Africa and developed the disease. They were used because they showed the signs of improvement in patients and actually cured them. However, now that ZMapp is gaining some attention, the FDA has started to look into the drug and put it in different types of experiments. It was first used experimentally to treat some people with Ebola virus disease during the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, but as of August 2014 it had not yet been tested in a clinical trial to support widespread usage in humans; it is not known whether it is effective to treat the disease, nor if it is safe.

The drug saved 4 out of the 6 monkeys so the US government funded Mapp for their research to make a treatment for humans. In 2013 the company Defyrus created a drug to fight Ebola called ZMAb like MB-003, this drug used three different mAbs taken from mice and resulted in the survival of the same species of monkeys. By 2014, Mapp Biopharmaceutical had tested the best combination of the 6 mAbs used in both ZMAb and MB-003. ...Tested combinations of MB-003 and the chimeric ZMAb antibodies in guinea pigs and then primates to determine the best combination, which turned out to be c13C6 from MB-003 and two chimeric mAbs from ZMAb, c2G4 and c4G7. This is ZMapp. ZMapp saved all 18 infected monkeys and showed that it stopped the reproduction of the deadly strain.

Zmapp sounds like it's the best option to treat Ebola (at the moment), however, it is so difficult to obtain that it actually stirred up a lot of controversy when it was given to American volunteers instead of patients in Africa.

The antibodies found in Zmapp come from the liquid inside the tobacco plant. This makes tobacco plantation essential to the production of Zmapp

Even though Zmapp did not attend the clinical trial, it was tested repeatedly on mice until it a combination proved to be effective.

Zmapp is injected as a Serum to stop Ebola, a virus that is spread through bodily fluids.