Gates Pledges $5.7M To Convalescent Serum Project To Cure Ebola.

The Los Angeles Times (11/20, Morin) reports in-depth on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s $5.7 million commitment to convalescent serum as a cure for Ebola. On Tuesday, Gates announced the project, which will collect plasma from the blood of Ebola survivors, treat it with pathogen inactivation technology to prevent the transmission of other diseases, and then administer it to Ebola patients. The Times adds that the FDA has not approved the pathogen inactivation drug, INTERCEPT, developed by Cerus Corp., though it did authorize the use of the drug in this project.
Amesh Adalja, researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told USA Today (11/19, Szabo) that plasma treatments from disease survivors have never actually been tested in clinical trials, though doctors have been using the practice to treat Ebola since the disease first appeared in the 1970s.
Senate HELP Committee Passes Bill To Speed FDA Approval Of Ebola Drugs. The Hill (11/20, Viebeck) reports that on Wednesday the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee approved S. 2917, which hastens the approval process of Ebola drugs by the FDA. The House has not passed its version of the bill through committee yet.
Columnists Call For Public-Private Partnership To Develop Ebola Drugs. In a column for USA Today (11/19, Von Eschenbach, Howard), Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, former commissioner of the FDA, and Paul Howard, director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress, argue that the reason why we do not yet have proven treatments for Ebola is because of a lack of funding. Developing effective treatments for infectious disease is too expensive for governments to tackle on their own, they write. The columnists call on Congress to pass a public-private partnership initiative to facilitate the development of Ebola and bioterrorism drugs.
Analyst: Increased Research Funding Necessary To Develop Ebola, Infectious Disease Treatments. Roll Call (11/20, Subscription Publication) published an op-ed by Claire Pomeroy, president of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, who calls on the US to fund initiatives to get ahead on research for infectious diseases, saying that after Ebola, a novel virus is inevitable. Pomeroy praises Sens. Orin Hatch and Elizabeth Warren for their proposal to fund NIH with $1 billion annually for the next 10 years, but cautions that even that amount of funding may not be sufficient.