Pentagon speeds up effort to find Ebola treatments
The Pentagon, which is dispatching up to 4,000 troops to west Africa to fight Ebola, is seeking a series of new proposals to control the virus that has stricken about 10,000 people in the region.
A new proposal released Friday by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency calls for proposals from researchers and companies that can develop new vaccines, testing procedures and other methods to fight the disease.
"Specifically, DTRA is seeking products that can be accelerated towards clinical evaluation in the near-term (3 to 6 months) to provide additional (medical countermeasure) capabilities to mitigate the epidemic in West Africa," the document says.
DTRA has long sought ways to stop Ebola and other diseases that could affect U.S. troops stationed overseas or that have the potential to be developed into biological weapons. Earlier this year, it called for researchers to develop treatments using "small molecules" to fight Ebola and other Tier 1 pathogens.
The agency is seeing a quick turnaround for the new proposals. For example, a proposal turned in by the end of October could be reviewed and analyzed for a final decision by December, the proposal says.
On Saturday, the Pentagon announced a new commander will lead the anti-Ebola effort in west Africa. Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky of the 101st Airborne Division "assumed command of Joint Forces Command-Operation United Assistance and the fight against Ebola in West Africa," according to a statement by Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman.
So far, four people have had the disease in the USA: Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Oct. 8, Dallas nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, and Craig Spencer, a New York doctor who developed the disease after working with patients in Guinea. Pham was released from a special unit at the National Institutes of Health on Friday and went to the White House, where she met and was hugged by President Obama.
The details cited by the Pentagon in the latest document show the urgency. It wants to take vaccines that are in late stages of development and get them into the affected areas more quickly and eliminate barriers to rapid production of the vaccines.
One vaccine in development is called BPSC-1001, the agency said. In previous studies, the vaccine has shown promise in animal testing, but it is made in lots of 1,000 to 5,000 vials. There may be risks, DTRA says, in producing larger amounts of the vaccine, which "requires a cold chain to maintain stability, which introduces complexity and risk into the use of this vaccine in austere conditions."
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