By Meagan Clark - An experimental drug made from tobacco plants appears to be saving two Americans infected with Ebola. The biotechnology drug produced by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., a San Diego-based company with nine employees, had only been tested on infected animals when it was given to the two health workers, Bloomberg reported.
A subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc. NYSE:RAI manufactures the ZMapp drug.
The patients, Christian missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, each received a dose of ZMapp in Liberia before flying to the U.S. for isolated treatment in Atlanta.
Brantly told his doctors in Liberia he was dying July 31, as his breathing became labored on the ninth day of his symptoms. But within an hour of taking the first dose, his condition reversed, causing a doctor to call his recovery "miraculous," according to CNN. In trials, small monkeys were given the drug within 48 hours of infection with Ebola. One monkey not given the drug died on the fifth day of infection.
Brantly arrived at Emory University's hospital Aug. 2. After receiving a second dose of the drug, his condition has continued improving, according to Samaritan Purse, his mission organization. Writebol returned to the U.S. Tuesday in “serious, but stable, condition,” according to her aid organization SIM. She will be given a second dose of the drug upon arrival to Atlanta.
ZMapp hasn't gone through clinincal trials, so its administration to Brantly and Writebol, though with their consent, was highly unusual. Though the drug is not difficult to manufacture, pharmaceutical companies don't have an economic incentive to produce the drug because developing and licensing the drug would be costly, and Ebola has killed only thousands since 1976, mostly poor Africans, health workers told the Telegraph.