EbolaPentagon’s medical countermeasures helpful in fighting Ebola outbreak
The U.S. Defense Department is better prepared to help with the West Africa Ebola outbreak because it has accelerated aspects of its medical countermeasures program established to protect troops from biological warfare agents, Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs said the other day. “Ebola has always been on the threat list of agents that we’re concerned about,” Weber said, adding that DoD and the Department of Health and Human Services have been the only investors in medical countermeasures for such historically rare contagions as Ebola virus disease. Among the products whose development or availability the department has accelerated in response to the outbreak in West Africa is a vaccine against the Zaire strain of Ebola that is causing the epidemic.
The Defense Department is better prepared to help with the West Africa Ebola outbreak because it has accelerated aspects of its medical countermeasures program established to protect troops from biological warfare agents, Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs said the other day.
Weber held a media roundtable Tuesday to discuss the accomplishments of his office over the past five years.
Weber is leaving the department this month after eighteen years to support the State Department’s Ebola response effort as deputy to Ambassador Nancy Powell, who last month was named to lead State’s Ebola Coordination Unit.
The DoD medical countermeasures program, overseen by the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, and formally called Chemical Biological Medical Systems, develops or acquires Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics to protect U.S. forces against chemical and biological threats.
“Ebola has always been on the threat list of agents that we’re concerned about,” Weber said, adding that DoD and the Department of Health and Human Services have been the only investors in medical countermeasures for such historically rare contagions as Ebola virus disease.
Among the products whose development or availability the department has accelerated in response to the outbreak in West Africa is a vaccine against the Zaire strain of Ebola that is causing the epidemic.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on 26 September that the FDA had approved the vaccine candidate for safety testing, and Weber said another vaccine candidate is in the pipeline.
The assistant secretary said the vaccine candidate now in Phase I clinical trials, or safety testing, is a monovalent — single-component — vaccine that uses genetically engineered cells from an animal disease called vesicular stomatitis to deliver the vaccine to sick animals or people.
“Both [the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency invested in some of these products,” Weber said, “like ZMapp and the [vesicular stomatitis] vaccine that is in clinical trials.”
ZMapp, being developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., is the experimental drug made from monoclonal antibodies licensed from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, and a Canadian biodefense company. The drug’s vaccine-grade proteins are grown in the cells of tobacco plants.
