When it comes to Ebola, everyone, especially those in the medical field, is racing against time, a fact Erica Ollman Saphire knows too well. Thus, she has set up an account in a crowd funding website to speed up the research and discovery of a potentially potent treatment to the deadly disease.
Saphire is an immunologist and a professor working in Scripps Research Institute. She also the leads a consortium of more than 20 laboratories across several countries that have been sending samples of antibodies from survivors to the institute, the same one that also helped develop ZMapp.
ZMapp had hogged the headlines during the middle of the outbreak when the experimental drug was given to two U.S. health workers infected by the disease while in Liberia. Both were cured.
However, even if the drug had been tested on monkeys, it didn't undergo any human clinical trial. Thus, the doctors could not fully attribute the cure to the drug itself. Moreover, in a report published in Reuters on Monday, October 13, an infectious disease specialist in Texas Dr. Thomas Geisbert mentioned that almost 40% of those who acquired the virus eventually lived without any drug intervention.
Nevertheless, Saphire and her team want to make the most of these samples as soon as possible. With the fund they can raise, they will be able to add more staff and buy additional equipment for processing. In her account at www.crowdrise.com/CureEbola, she is asking for $100,000. As of this moment, she's already achieved 14% of her goal since it went live a couple of days ago. It's unclear how long the campaign is going to be.
The consortium had initially received over $25 million National Institutes of Health grant.
Ebola has already killed more than 4,000 people, most of them in West Africa, like Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The United States already has one dead, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man, with another health worker testing positive of the virus.