CT Post - Ebola Vaccine Being Developed in State

News Article

By Amanda Cuda

Less than a week after it was announced that the deadly Ebola virus had shown up in the United States, representatives of a Connecticut lab announced they have been working on a vaccine for the illness.

Manon Cox, president and CEO of Protein Sciences in Meriden, said the company is developing a vaccine based on the same concept as its flu vaccine Flublok, which hit the market last year.

Like Flublok, the Ebola vaccine doesn't contain a live virus. Instead, it uses a protein that tricks the body's immune system into making antibodies to fight Ebola virus before the disease is even present in the body.

The vaccine has been in the works for a while, Cox said Monday during a press conference at Protein Sciences, but the project was delayed due to a reduction in funding.

But, in the wake of the recent outbreak in multiple West African countries that has sickened more than 7,000 people -- and killed more than 3,000 -- the company has stepped up its work on the vaccine.

"Today we know it's really necessary to have a vaccine," Cox said.

The need became even more urgent in the past week, with the announcement Sept. 30 that Ebola was found in a man who had traveled from Liberia to Dallas, Texas. Fears about the illness escalated further Monday, when it was announced that an NBC cameraman who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia was being transported to Nebraska for treatment.

That same day, reports surfaced that a nurse in Spain became the first person to contract Ebola outside of West Africa. She reportedly contracted the disease while treating a priest who had gotten the illness while working in Sierra Leone.

Though other Ebola vaccines are in development, Cox said that to her knowledge the vaccine being produced at Protein Sciences is the only one that doesn't use live virus.

Cox said the vaccine being developed at Protein Sciences wouldn't prevent Ebola, but would aid the body in fighting it off. Her hope is that it would be given to health care workers, military personnel and others traveling to countries with Ebola.

Protein Sciences expects to have a version of the vaccine to the National Institutes of Health by the end of the year.

If the vaccine follows the standard path to approval, Cox said, it could be several years before the product is officially approved. But she said she's urging the federal government to start using the vaccine as soon as possible, given the massive outbreak.

Protein Sciences was founded in 1983 and has been developing vaccines and biopharmaceuticals for the prevention and treatment of a variety of diseases for more than 30 years.

To date, there have been no Ebola cases in Connecticut, a fact that U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, reiterated during Monday's event at Protein Sciences.

"There is no Ebola here," she said. "Let's be clear -- none."

Still, she said, the outbreak in West Africa, and the cases popping up elsewhere on the globe, are a "wake-up call" about medical research funding.

DeLauro said NIH funding has been cut by $1.2 billion over the last four years, before adjusting for inflation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program that supports state and local public health professionals working on the front lines has been cut by 16 percent in the past four years, and the federal Hospital Preparedness program has been cut by 44 percent over that time period.

"That is dangerous to public health," DeLauro said.

Cox said Protein Sciences had received about $100,000 in NIH funding for the Ebola vaccine.

However, in 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the company $150 million to support the development of Flublok, and Cox said that project essentially provided the building blocks for the Ebola vaccine.

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