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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, blaming budget cuts for his agency’s failure to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus. However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth...

Israeli drug companies, such as Teva, are pretty good at producing imitation drugs quickly. Teva was truly disruptive to big pharma companies, since they often feared blockbuster drugs going off patent as Teva was ready and waiting with a quality generic imitation. It’s not so surprising that what is bad for big pharma is good for the patient and the consumer, and now an Israeli biotech company named Protalix is ready to replenish supplies of the experimental Ebola vaccine, ZMapp. The disease has already claimed the lives of 3,944, predominantly in Africa, but in the U.S., there has been one...

A Chinese pharmaceutical firm that has links with the country's military has developed an experimental Ebola drug. It is hoping federal authorities will immediately grant its approval so it can be marketed the soonest. Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd developed the drug called JK-05, along with the Institute of Microbiological Epidemiology, a part of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. It has been approved but only for emergency military purposes. Sihuan also admitted during an investor call last week it has yet to undergo clinical trials. The firm said it is working to have the tests started, but if possible...

Officials began testing a Canadian-made Ebola vaccine on human volunteers in the United States Monday. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research enlisted 39 healthy volunteers for the trial, and injected the first subject with the VSV-EBOV vaccine in phase 1 of testing Monday. Canada supplied 20 vials of the vaccine for the trial, which medical officials will be monitoring predominately throughout the phase 1 trial for safety, and also to determine proper dosage level. Officials divided the volunteers into three groups, the first of which received a low-dose of the vaccination and will need medical clearance from a safety...

A World Health Organization official says an Ebola vaccine developed in Canada may be the first to be approved for use, possibly before the year is out. Marie-Paule Kieny says data from the first safety studies in humans of two experimental vaccines should be available by November. She says if they are deemed safe to use, it could open the door initially for use in health-care workers tending the sick. One of the experimental vaccines was developed at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The company which licensed that vaccine, NewLink Genetics, announced this week that it had received approval...

Britons are to be the first in the world to test a new vaccine against the deadly ebola virus. Altogether 60 healthy volunteers will be given the vaccine next month in a trial led by Oxford University scientists. If the vaccine performs as well in humans as in monkeys, the trial will be extended to 80 people in The Gambia and in Mali. The entire trial programme is being fast-tracked – subject to ethical approval – with the intention of using the vaccine in people at high risk in West Africa early next year. Latest figures show that more than...

The National Institutes of Health announced today that it will begin testing an Ebola vaccine on humans starting next week — efforts that were expedited in response to the outbreak tearing through West Africa. “We have accelerated the timeline for testing experimental Ebola vaccines that we have been developing for several years,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, during a phone conference today. The study is “the first step in developing a vaccine that could be licensed and used in the field to protect not only front-line health care...

Dr. Leslie Lobel is an Israeli virologist conducting cutting edge research on a cure for Ebola -- a cure he believes is three to five years away. As reported in the Times of Israel: Unlike many people, Dr. Leslie Lobel has not been shocked to hear about the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the largest ever recorded since the virus’s discovery in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). A Ben-Gurion University of the Negev virologist and a leader in the search for a cure for the devastating disease, Lobel had been predicting such an outbreak. (snip)...

Canada will donate doses of its experimental Ebola vaccine to the international community and the World Health Organization will help determine who receives it, a federal official says. The Canadian government expects to donate 800 to 1,000 doses of the experimental Ebola vaccine developed at the National Microbiology Laboratory. On Wednesday, Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, who represents Winnipeg, where the National Microbiology Laboratory is located, said the WHO, advised by experts, will decide how to strike a balance on who gets the vaccine Canada offers to the international community. "This is a decision that will be made by experts and...

The Public Health Agency of Canada and the federal government have shared more details about an experimental Ebola vaccine that will be donated to help fight the current outbreak in West Africa. Dr. Gary Kobinger, chief of special pathogens at the agency, and Heritage Minister Shelly Glover shared more information about the VSV-EBOV vaccine at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Here's what we know so far about the made-in-Canada vaccine. How many doses will be sent? Canada will be donating between 800 to 1,000 doses of the vaccine. A small amount of the vaccine will remain behind, in the event...

Clinical trials of a preventative vaccine for the Ebola virus made by British pharma company GlaxoSmithKline may begin next month and made available by 2015, the World Health Organization said on Saturday. "We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in the United States and certainly in African countries, since that's where we have the cases," Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, the WHO's head of vaccines and immunisation, told French radio. He said he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available. "We think that if we start in September, we could already have results by the end of...

Scientists have successfully immunised mice against the deadly ebola virus which has killed thousands in Africa. They used virus-like particles (VLPs) which are non-infectious but are capable of triggering a strong response by the immune system. Usually lethal doses of ebola had no impact on the vaccinated mice. The study, by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It looks like a virus, so you have the protective immune response, but it's basically an empty shell. The scientists hope their work will lead to a vaccine which will...

The first test in humans of an experimental vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus began yesterday, government scientists said. The vaccine, administered by injection, was designed to try to prevent outbreaks of the lethal hemorrhagic fever where it occurs naturally in Africa. It is also a bid to thwart any efforts to use the highly infectious virus as a bioterrorist agent. As part of a standard three-stage process, the first phase involves testing the vaccine's safety. Scientists also plan to measure immune responses among volunteers receiving the shots. No effective treatment exists against the viral infection, which kills up to...

<p>Federal scientists have developed a fast-acting, single-shot Ebola vaccine that makes monkeys immune to the lethal virus six times faster than an earlier version.</p> <p>If the same approach works in humans, it could control or prevent outbreaks of the rare infection, which causes high fever, severe pain and bleeding from the eyes as blood vessels collapse. Nearly everyone who is infected dies within a few days.</p>