Experimental Ebola Serum Grown in Tobacco Leaves

[LiberalArkie]

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 Samaritan’s 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 they’re infected, Howard says it takes a week for the plants to make enough of the protein to harvest and distill into a useable drug.

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