[opensourcepharma] a open source cure for Ebola?

Wed Aug 13 16:57:28 UTC 2014

Hi
My new blog is on the limits of patent system to drive innovation:
http://innovip.blogspot.in/2014/08/the-limits-of-patent-system.html
Zakir

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 9:37 PM, Richter, Melinda [JRDUS] <
MRicht23 at its.jnj.com> wrote:

>  You all may have seen this already, but in case not:
>
>
>
> *FACTBOX-Developers of potential Ebola vaccines and treatments*
>
> 11 August 2014 14:28 EDT
>
> Aug 11 (Reuters) - Several companies with potential Ebola vaccines and
> treatments have captured the spotlight, as developers face mounting
> pressure to expedite research on new medical interventions.
>
> The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed nearly 1,000 people and
> prompted the World Health Organization to declare an international health
> emergency.
>
> No Ebola drugs or vaccines have entered mid-stage human trials, let alone
> been approved. The most advanced have been tested only in monkeys and a
> handful of humans.
>
> VACCINES
>
> GLAXOSMITHKLINE PLC
>
> GSK is co-developing a vaccine with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy
> and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which has shown promising results in
> primates.
>
> The vaccine is due to enter early-stage human trials, pending U.S. Food
> and Drug Administration approval. GSK has said human testing should start
> this year. NIAID expects trials to begin "as early as fall 2014."
>
> Even if it is fast-tracked and works as well as hoped, the new vaccine
> could not be ready for widespread deployment before 2015.
>
> JOHNSON & JOHNSON
>
> The company's Crucell unit is working with the U.S. NIAID to develop a
> vaccine, which should enter early-stage clinical testing in late-2015 or
> early-2016. The Crucell vaccine is designed to give additional protection
> against Marburg, another severe and highly fatal disease caused by a virus
> from the same family as Ebola.
>
> BAVARIAN NORDIC A/S
>
> The Danish company is developing its smallpox vaccine, Imvanex, for use as
> an anti-filovirus injection. The drug was found to be 100 percent
> protective against Ebola and Marburg in non-human primates.
>
> The U.S. government awarded the company a $17.9 million contract in 2012.
> The injectable form of Imvanex is likely to enter Phase I clinical trials
> in the United States in 2015, Maxim analyst Jason Kolbert said.
>
> PROFECTUS BIOSCIENCES INC
>
> The privately owned company has tested its vaccine in monkeys, with good
> results. A single intramuscular injection was found to protect all of the
> rhesus monkeys exposed to Ebola three weeks later. The company hopes to
> launch a human trial within 12 months.
>
> TREATMENTS
>
> TEKMIRA PHARMACEUTICALS CORP
>
> The FDA has allowed the Canadian drugmaker to resume testing a drug in
> people infected with Ebola, after blocking human tests last month. The FDA
> had halted the early-stage study following safety concerns among people
> taking the highest doses of the drug.
>
> BIOCRYST PHARMACEUTICALS INC
>
> The company's BCX4430 drug is in pre-clinical trials to treat Marburg, and
> analysts believe it could potentially cure Ebola.
>
> SIGA TECHNOLOGIES INC
>
> The bio-defense drug developer's experimental drug, ST-383, aims to
> prevent the Ebola virus from entering host cells, effectively ending its
> replication cycle, Kolbert said in a note. The company says the drug is
> being tested on animals.
>
> MEDIVECTOR
>
> The privately held drugmaker, along with its Japanese partner, Fujifilm
> Holdings Corp, is in talks with the FDA to submit an application to expand
> the use of its influenza drug, Favipiravir, as a treatment for Ebola.
>
> SAREPTA THERAPEUTICS INC
>
> Sarepta has undertaken some human trials on its anti-Ebola drug, but lost
> government funding two years ago.
>
> MAPP BIOPHARMACEUTICAL INC
>
> The California-based privately owned company shot into the limelight when
> its anti-Ebola drug was given to two Ebola-infected U.S. aid workers, who
> have since shown signs of improvement. However, so far it has only been
> tested in monkeys. Mapp was part of a consortium of 15 research outfits
> that in March won a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health
> worth up to $28 million to find a treatment for Ebola.
>
> NANOVIRICIDES INC
>
> The company said last week it would resume development of its anti-Ebola
> drug. (Reporting by Natalie Grover in Bangalore)
>
>
>
> jjn1
>
>
>
> (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Click For Restrictions -
> http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
>
>
> [image:
> https://iwidget.infodesk.com/infodisplay/images/poweredby_bktext.gif]
> <http://www.infodesk.com/>
>
>
>
>
>
> *MELINDA RICHTER | Head of Janssen Labs*
>
>
>
> [image: cid:image002.png at 01CE8EB4.BF3F57A0]
>
> 858.242.1501
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* opensourcepharma [mailto:opensourcepharma-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *On
> Behalf Of *zakir thomas
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 12, 2014 1:48 AM
> *To:* Tomasz Sablinski
> *Cc:* opensourcepharma at lists.okfn.org
>
> *Subject:* Re: [opensourcepharma] a open source cure for Ebola?
>
>
>
> There is this broad US patent (
> http://www.google.com/patents/US20120251502 )covering ebola virus:
>
> Reproducing Claim 1 and 2 below:
>
> Zakir
>
>
>
> Claims
>
> *1*. An isolated hEbola virus comprising a nucleic acid molecule
> comprising a nucleotide sequence of:
>
> a) a nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NOS: 1 or 10;
>
> b) a nucleotide sequence hybridizing under stringent conditions to SEQ ID
> NOS: 1 or 10; or
>
> c) a nucleotide sequence of at least 70%-99% identity to the SEQ ID NOS: 1
> or 10, with the proviso that said nucleotide sequence is not SEQ ID NO: 20.
>
> *2*. An isolated hEbola virus having Centers for Disease Control Deposit
> Accession No. 200706291.
>
> *3*. The hEbola virus of claim 1 which is killed.
>
> *4*. The hEbola virus of claim 1 which is an attenuated hEbola virus.
>
> *5*. The virus of claim 4 wherein at least one property of the attenuated
> hEbola virus is reduced from among infectivity, replication ability,
> protein synthesis ability, assembling ability or cytopathic effect.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 5:57 PM, Tomasz Sablinski <
> tomasz at transparencyls.com> wrote:
>
> A good idea. I think we would have bigger impact if this letter is
> structured as a request for support (financial, etc) of a concrete action
> that Open Source Pharma is ready to take:
>
> 1/ coordinate the crowd sourced selection of suitable compound(s)
>
> 2/ design a clinical study protocol for testing of the above
>
> I am putting together a draft proposal for Open Source Pharma to consider
> Transparency Life Sciences for the execution of these crowdsourcing
> efforts; I should have something out to all of you to review in the next
> day or two.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomasz
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 7:41 AM, Els Torreele <
> els.torreele at opensocietyfoundations.org> wrote:
>
> So Ebola was just declared a public health emergency by WHO.
>
>
>
> Considering the call by Jeremy Farrar (Welcome Trust), Peter Piot (London
> School) and David Heymann (ex-WHO, now UK Health Protection Agency) to test
> experimental treatments now (and not only on Americans) and to do so with
> public money and leadership (not waiting for companies to develop their own
> drugs the normal and slow way),
>
> (see
> http://online.wsj.com/articles/experimental-medicine-and-african-ebola-1407258551),
>
> could we write an open letter to Farrar, Piot and Heymann and
> proposing/demanding that this be done in an open source approach, sharing
> all data, crowdsourcing for more data and ideas, and possibly get more and
> more researchers on it?
>
> The Welcome Trust and London School are likely supportive of an open
> approach, and Farrar and co. could possibly be approached beforehand to
> seek their support.
>
>
>
> I'm not a good writer, but I'm sure one or several of you could develop
> such a letter quickly, and then we can get it out early next week, before
> WHO convenes that medical ethics expert committee to discuss the ethics of
> the accelerated clinical research (in which data sharing could be an
> important element)
>
>
>
> What do people think?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> *From:* opensourcepharma [opensourcepharma-bounces at lists.okfn.org] on
> behalf of Matthew Todd [mattoddchem at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 07, 2014 6:03 PM
> *To:* opensourcepharma at lists.okfn.org
> *Subject:* Re: [opensourcepharma] a open source cure for Ebola?
>
> I had an interesting day today giving a talk at Boston University. They
> have a former NIH-supported compound collection (
> http://cmld.bu.edu/science/compoundlibraries/). If a suitable bio lab
> could be found for an Ebola screen, they would be interested in
> contributing their whole collection to a screening effort in the short
> term, open source. This is great.
>
> The compounds are not a repurposing library, but have interesting and
> diverse chemotypes. I wonder if we can use this pledge to obtain
> contributions from other labs, but before I start asking, I guess we need
> to know (John M) whether there are the facilities to handle such a screen
> anywhere? We're starting to talk thousands of compounds.
>
> Gordon Conference: That's great news, John. I was just looking at their
> rules yesterday. They don't do "policy" conferences, but the easy thing to
> do there is to ensure the talks are on science, but to qualify they need to
> be run open source, at least to some extent. It'd be really interesting to
> pull that program together. Let me know (offline if you prefer) if I can
> help.
>
> Best,
> M
>
>
>
>
>
> On 7 August 2014 09:57, McKew, John (NIH/NCATS) [E] <john.mckew at nih.gov>
> wrote:
>
> Just getting caught here as I was away at a Gordon conference this week.
>  I like the idea of crowd sourcing information using a Wiki format.  I can
> contact NIAID and see what resources they are deploying or gathered.  I
> will have to read through The papers Bernard has cited to see what was
> screened to find these compounds. I would guess nobody has screened a
> repurposing collection as large as the one we have so that might be worth
> doing.  The catch is this must be BSL4 level of containment and our
> facility can only go to BSL 2. NIAID has a faculty for BSL3 and. 4
> screening so that would be an option.  When I get back to the office I will
> look into how interested people are in this.  When people were coming down
> with CM after IT injection of steroids contaminated with fungus we were
> able to complete a screen and release data in a publication in about 3
> months from outbreak.  In that case we did not find anything new.
>
> On another note I introduced the concept of a Gordon Med Chem session on
> Open Source  Drug Discovery and Development at the planning session last
> night.  At first the idea was met with complete silence but after I sold it
> to the group I was able to gain enough enthusiasm to get this accepted into
> the next stage of decision making.  I will let everyone what I hear next.
>  As Matt mentioned at Bellagio this is primarily a very conservative group
> of med chemists so this was a nice surprise.
> John
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
>
>
>
> MATTHEW TODD | Associate Professor
> School of Chemistry | Faculty of Science
>
> THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
> Rm 519, F11 | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
>
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> http://sydney.edu.au/science/chemistry/research/todd.html | W
> http://opensourcemalaria.org/
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> MATTHEW TODD | Associate Professor
> School of Chemistry | Faculty of Science
>
> THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
> Rm 519, F11 | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
> T +61 2 9351 2180  | F +61 2 9351 3329  | M +61 415 274104
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