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F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, commonly known as Roche, is a Swiss multinational healthcare company that operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. Its holding company, Roche Holding AG, has bearer shares listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. The company headquarters are located in Basel. Roche is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, and the leading provider of cancer treatments globally.
Labcorp Drug Development is a contract research organization (CRO) headquartered in Burlington, North Carolina, providing nonclinical, preclinical, clinical and commercialization services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Formerly called Covance, the company is part of Labcorp, which employs more than 70,000 people worldwide. Labcorp Drug Development claims to provide the world's largest central laboratory network. Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (Labcorp), was rated one of the best places to work for LGBTQ equality by the Human Rights Campaign in 2018-2021. Labcorp Drug Development has been subject to harassment from animal rights groups for its animal testing procedures.
Ferring Pharmaceuticals is a Swiss multinational biopharmaceutical company specialising in areas such as reproductive health, maternal health, gastroenterology and urology. Ferring has been developing treatments for mothers and babies for over 50 years.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an American biotechnology company headquartered in Westchester County, New York, about 25 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. The company was founded in 1988. Originally focused on neurotrophic factors and their regenerative capabilities, giving rise to its name, the company then branched out into the study of both cytokine and tyrosine kinase receptors.
CJ Group (Korean: 씨제이) is a South Korean conglomerate holding company headquartered in Seoul. It comprises numerous businesses in various industries of food and food service, pharmaceutics and biotechnology, entertainment and media, home shopping and logistics. CJ Group was originally a branch of Samsung until it separated in the 1990s.
BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an American pharmaceutical company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. The company is a late stage biotech company that focuses on oral drugs for rare and serious diseases. BioCryst's antiviral drug peramivir (Rapivab) was approved by FDA in December 2014. It has also been approved in Japan, Korea, and China.
Favipiravir, sold under the brand name Avigan among others, is an antiviral medication used to treat influenza in Japan. It is also being studied to treat a number of other viral infections, including SARS-CoV-2. Like the experimental antiviral drugs T-1105 and T-1106, it is a pyrazinecarboxamide derivative.
Brincidofovir, sold under the brand name Tembexa, is an antiviral drug used to treat smallpox. Brincidofovir is a prodrug of cidofovir. Conjugated to a lipid, the compound is designed to release cidofovir intracellularly, allowing for higher intracellular and lower plasma concentrations of cidofovir, effectively increasing its activity against dsDNA viruses, as well as oral bioavailability.
The 2013–2016 outbreak of Ebola virus disease, centered in Western Africa, was the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history and caused major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The first cases were recorded in Guinea in December 2013; later, the disease spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, with minor outbreaks occurring elsewhere. It caused significant mortality, with the case fatality rate reported which was initially considerable, while the rate among hospitalised patients was 57–59%, the final numbers 28,616 people, including 11,310 deaths, for a case-fatality rate of 40%. Small outbreaks occurred in Nigeria and Mali, and secondary infections of medical workers occurred in the United States and Spain. In addition, isolated cases were recorded in Senegal, the United Kingdom and Italy. The number of cases peaked in October 2014 and then began to decline gradually, following the commitment of substantial international resources. As of 8 May 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) and respective governments reported a total of 28,646 suspected cases and 11,323 deaths (39.5%), though the WHO believes that this substantially understates the magnitude of the outbreak.
Arbutus Biopharma Corporation is a publicly traded Canadian biopharmaceutical company with an expertise in liposomal drug delivery and RNA interference, and is developing drugs for hepatitis B infection.
TKM-Ebola was an experimental antiviral drug for Ebola disease that was developed by Arbutus Biopharma in Vancouver, Canada. The drug candidate was formerly known as Ebola-SNALP.
Recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus–Zaire Ebola virus (rVSV-ZEBOV), also known as Ebola Zaire vaccine live and sold under the brand name Ervebo, is an Ebola vaccine for adults that prevents Ebola caused by the Zaire ebolavirus. When used in ring vaccination, rVSV-EBOV has shown a high level of protection. Around half the people given the vaccine have mild to moderate adverse effects that include headache, fatigue, and muscle pain.
An epidemic of Ebola virus disease occurred in Liberia from 2014 to 2015, along with the neighbouring countries of Guinea and Sierra Leone. The first cases of virus were reported by late March 2014. The Ebola virus, a biosafety level four pathogen, is an RNA virus discovered in 1976.
Ebola vaccines are vaccines either approved or in development to prevent Ebola. The first vaccine to be approved in the United States was rVSV-ZEBOV in December 2019. It had been used extensively in the Kivu Ebola epidemic under a compassionate use protocol. During the early 21st century, several vaccine candidates displayed efficacy to protect nonhuman primates against lethal infection.
Organizations from around the world responded to the West African Ebola virus epidemic. In July 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened an emergency meeting with health ministers from eleven countries and announced collaboration on a strategy to co-ordinate technical support to combat the epidemic. In August, they declared the outbreak an international public health emergency and published a roadmap to guide and coordinate the international response to the outbreak, aiming to stop ongoing Ebola transmission worldwide within 6–9 months. In September, the United Nations Security Council declared the Ebola virus outbreak in the West Africa subregion a "threat to international peace and security" and unanimously adopted a resolution urging UN member states to provide more resources to fight the outbreak; the WHO stated that the cost for combating the epidemic will be a minimum of $1 billion.
Galidesivir is an antiviral drug, an adenosine analog. It is developed by BioCryst Pharmaceuticals with funding from NIAID, originally intended as a treatment for hepatitis C, but subsequently developed as a potential treatment for deadly filovirus infections such as Ebola virus disease, Marburg virus disease, and Zika virus. Currently, galidesivir is under phase 1 human trial in Brazil for coronavirus.
JK-05 is a broad-spectrum antiviral drug developed by the Chinese company Sihuan Pharmaceutical along with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences. It is reported to act as an inhibitor of the viral enzyme RNA polymerase which is essential for viral replication. In tests on mice, JK-05 was claimed to show efficacy against a range of RNA viruses, including influenza, Ebola virus and yellow fever, as well as several arenaviruses and bunyaviruses. The chemical structure of JK-05 has not been disclosed as of October 2014, but it is claimed to be a small molecule drug with a comparatively simple structure, which should be readily amenable to synthesis scale-up for mass production if testing is successful. The drug is however admitted to be similar to the Japanese anti-influenza drug favipiravir, developed by Fujifilm Holdings Corp, which has been used effectively to treat patients with Ebola. In addition, WHO committee members mentioned that the drug is a copy product of favipiravir, because patents of favipiravir were already registered in 2006 in China. The drug has been given preliminary approval by the Chinese authorities to be available for Chinese health workers involved in combating the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, or if Ebola were to spread into mainland China. Several other Chinese developed antiviral drugs with anti-Ebola activity have also been disclosed, but have not progressed so far through development as JK-05.
There is no cure or specific treatment for the Ebola virus disease that is currently approved for market, although various experimental treatments are being developed. For past and current Ebola epidemics, treatment has been primarily supportive in nature.
Triazavirin is a broad-spectrum antiviral drug developed in Russia through a joint effort of Ural Federal University, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ural Center for Biopharma Technologies and Medsintez Pharmaceutical. It has a novel triazolotriazine core, which represents a new structural class of non-nucleoside antiviral drugs.
Trudie Lang is a Professor of Global Health Research at the University of Oxford. She specialises in clinical trials research capacity building in low-resource setting, and helped to organise the trial for the drug brincidofovir during the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak.
References
- 1 2 Patti Waldmeir and Lucy Hornby (9 October 2014). "Chinese company develops Ebola treatment". Financial Times. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
- ↑ Nakanishi, Azusa (11 December 2014). "Copycats put squeeze on Japanese drugmakers". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
