BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product Development

Ebola realities

Why new Ebola vaccines, treatments won't be ready in time for current crisis

September 15, 2014 7:00 AM UTC

Hope that experimental Ebola vaccines and therapies might help contain the current outbreak is sliding into hype as public health officials exaggerate how quickly new products could be deployed and minimize the uncertainties inherent in extrapolating success in animal studies to humans, according to Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Briefing reporters at a Sept. 5 press conference, Marie-Paule Kieny, an assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, said there is "a realistic hope" that blood transfusions from Ebola survivors, as well as experimental vaccines and therapies, will be available in time to help reverse the disaster in central Africa...