EU and drug industry set aside €280m for Ebola
pharmafile | November 7, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Africa, Ebola, WHO, chan, vaccines, virus, west
The EU’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has unveiled a new programme to find vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for Ebola, funded to the tune of €280 million.
The IMI – which operates as a partnership between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry – says it is now seeking proposals for projects that “will help make a difference in the current and future outbreaks”.
The money brings the total investment by the EU into tackling Ebola to €805 million, with DG Sanco pledging €525 million to the cause earlier this year.
The investment programme – called Ebola+ – comes as the number of Ebola cases around the world has risen above 13,000, with more than 4,800 deaths, according to figures released this week by the World Health Organization (WHO).
It also follows damning remarks by WHO director general Margaret Chan at a meeting in Africa, who asks why – given that Ebola emerged nearly four decades ago – clinicians are “still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure?”
She blames a ‘profit-driven’ pharmaceutical industry that “does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay”. She continues: “WHO has been trying to make this issue visible for ages, continued Chan. “Now people can see for themselves.”
While critics will argue that the IMI’s initiative comes too late to have an impact on the current outbreak, the hope is that it will lay the foundations to tackle future epidemics.
A primary focus of the programme will be the development, manufacture, transport, and storage of vaccines; ensuring compliance with vaccine regimens; and the development of rapid diagnostic tests for the virus, said the IMI. The first projects are expected to begin in early 2015.
“Stopping the spread of Ebola, now and for future generations, is a key priority for the pharmaceutical industry, which has a long history in fighting pervasive infectious disease,” says Richard Bergstrom, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (EFPIA) at the launch of Ebola+ initiative.
Of the total €280m pot, half will be funded directly by the IMI, and the remainder will be provided by big pharma companies in the form of ‘in-kind’ contributions, such as their researchers’ time and access to resources.
New vaccine trials
There was some more encouraging news on the vaccine front this week, when Switzerland’s drugs regulator Swissmedic showed a green light to a clinical trial of the experimental VSV-ZEBOV vaccine developed by scientists at the Public Health Agency of Canada. Swiss research teams have already started a trial of GlaxoSmithKline’s ChAd3 candidate, with the first patients recruited at the end of last month.
VSV-ZEBOV is also being tested on healthy volunteers in the US and additional trials are planned to start very soon in Germany, Gabon and Kenya, according to the WHO.
Johnson & Johnson announced last month that its vaccine will be fast-tracked and human trials will now start in early 2015, a year earlier than originally planned.
Phil Taylor
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