An Ebola experimental drug is showing a lot of potential and great promise when it comes to getting rid of the virus in test animals. Meanwhile, human testing of the possibly effective vaccine is now underway and is set to commence this week, the BBC has learned.
According to researchers who are working on the Ebola experimental drug called ZMapp, it is "100% effective" in the animal testing they conducted using monkeys.
Scientists maintained that trials on 18 rhesus macaques proved that the drug is very efficient in ensuring survival from the deadly virus.
The drug is said to even be quite potent in the later stages and commonly the most fatal ones of the infection.
In human testing, the Ebola experimental drug also shows promise since only two out of seven people tested have died later on from the disease.
ZMapp is currently dubbed as the "secret serum" because it is still in the experimental stages and no established data on its effectiveness to treat Ebola is available as of late.
However, if the said drug is to be marketed, its limited supply will not help the 20,000 people that are predicted to be infected due to the outbreak in West Africa.
The ongoing outbreak, which began in March, has already killed 1,552 people, as per the latest World Health organization update.
Apart from the Ebola experiment drug, an Ebola vaccine is currently in the works.
The vaccine is designed to counter an existing infection rather than preventing its transmission, reported ABC News.
"There is an urgent need for a protective Ebola vaccine, and it is important to establish that a vaccine is safe and spurs the immune system to react in a way necessary to protect against infection," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
The Ebola vaccine is currently being developed by the National Institutes of Health along with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
Fauci said that human testing is set to start this week because the vaccine "performed extremely well" in primate studies.
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