Jersey*Girl
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2008
- Messages
- 10,266
- Reaction score
- 152
He was tough to understand. The 1 thing I was glad to hear about from him is that they are working on making more of that "Z-?" drug.
It sounds like they are trying to make it super fast. It was interesting that they were looking to tobacco manufacturers to try to get more plants to create some more. I wonder what is unique about tobacco plants that helps them make the Z-? drug.
There is one type of tobacco plant that is particularly susceptible to tobacco mosaic virus and that is the one that they use.
http://www.webmd.com/news/20140804/ebola-virus-vaccine
Aug. 4, 2014 -- ZMapp, the experimental treatment rushed to two Americans infected with Ebola in Africa, is grown in specially modified leaves of tobacco -- a plant better known for harming health than healing.
We complied with a request from Emory University and Samaritans Purse to provide a very limited amount of ZMapp last week, says David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American Services, the parent company of Kentucky BioProcessing. The small biopharma company in Owensboro, KY, has been contracted to grow the drug.
Making the serum is slow, in part, because the plants must be grown for several weeks before they are infected with a type of protein. Basically the plants act like a photocopier of the proteins, Howard says.
Once theyre infected, Howard says it takes a week for the plants to make enough of the protein to harvest and distill into a useable drug.
Talk about transforming tobacco, Howard says.