New Life Sciences Research Reveals Early Stage Treatments to Help Scientists in the Fight against Ebola

Thomson Reuters disease profile provides greater understanding of key Ebola treatments in the drug pipeline and experimental therapies approaching development

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Thomson Reuters

Aug 18, 2014, 08:00 ET

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world leader in intelligent information for businesses and professionals, released a comprehensive disease profile on Ebola Virus Disease that includes a detailed analysis of two new treatments in the pipeline and two experimental candidates approaching development.

Ebola deaths in West Africa have exceeded the 1,000 mark since ravaging Liberia. Practitioners in Britain were recently ordered to look out for symptoms of the killer virus to stop it from taking hold in the UK, with doctors receiving new guidelines on how to deal with suspected cases. Ebola Virus Disease is particularly lethal. According to the World Health Organization, outbreaks have a fatality rate of up to 90 percent. There is currently no effective treatment.

The Thomson Reuters Ebola Disease Briefing is available free of charge through its LS Research website, a resource providing researchers with the latest news on disease insights and developing treatments, through reports and biological pathway maps. This resource offers disease profiling and comparative data to the current drug landscape for clinically devastating, relevant diseases, such as Ebola.

"Our LS Research resource is designed to place valuable scientific insights into the hands of researchers to offer new angles on understanding devastating diseases—not just as related to Ebola, but for other conditions that continue to compromise quality of life for people around the world," said Jon Brett-Harris, managing director of Thomson Reuters Life Sciences.

Through analysis using Thomson Reuters Integrity—an industry-leading resource providing researchers with reliable, detailed drug R&D information across multiple disciplines—LS Research analysts identified two potential Ebola treatments in the drug pipeline: Sarepta Therapeutics' VP24 expression inhibitor known as "AVI-7537" and Tekmira's VP24 expression inhibitor known as "Ebola SNALP."

VP24 is believed to play a significant role in Ebola Virus Disease, and may have an effect on the formation and replication of the viral genome. Scientists are now exploring the inhibition of this VP24 protein as a potential treatment to block the building and reproduction of the Ebola Virus genome.

Both of these treatments are currently in Phase 1 clinical trials. The LS Research site also provides comprehensive information on the disease itself.

There are also two experimental treatment approaches set to move into the pipeline. The first, ZMapp, a novel drug candidate in development by Mapp BioPharmaceutical, LeafBio, Defyru, the U.S. Government and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), is a cocktail of three different humanized monoclonal antibodies produced in nicotina plants that target the virus. The aim of this potential therapy is to halt the progression of Ebola; it was recently successful in treating two American healthcare workers infected by the outbreak in West Africa. The second is a vaccine candidate rVSVdeltaG-SWGP-2A-MFL being developed by the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. It consists of a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus expressing multiple regional fragments of the Ebola virus.

To further support the efforts in the fight against the Ebola virus, Thomson Reuters BioWorld, an industry-leading biopharmaceutical news resource, has comprised a collection of articles highlighting the most innovative research in recent years and the latest updates to provide greater insight into the disease and the treatments in development. Visit BioWorld to view this special report.

Visit LS Research to view the Ebola Disease Briefing and a variety of reports providing insights into other devastating conditions.

Learn more about Integrity.

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SOURCE Thomson Reuters