Mapp Biopharmaceutical is an American

pharmaceutical A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and ...

company founded in 2003 by Larry Zeitlin and Kevin Whaley. Mapp Biopharmaceutical is based in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...

. It is responsible for the research and development of ZMapp, a drug which is still under development and comprises three humanized

monoclonal antibodies A monoclonal antibody (mAb, more rarely called moAb) is an antibody produced from a cell Lineage made by cloning a unique white blood cell. All subsequent antibodies derived this way trace back to a unique parent cell. Monoclonal antibodies ...

used as a treatment for

Ebola virus disease Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...

. The drug was first tested in humans during the

2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak The 2013–2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease, centered in Western Africa, was the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history. It caused major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia a ...

. The ZMapp drug is a result of the collaboration between Mapp Biopharmaceutical, LeafBio (the commercial arm of Mapp Biopharmaceutical), Defyrus Inc. (

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

), the U.S. government, and the

Public Health Agency of Canada The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC; french: Agence de la santé publique du Canada, ASPC) is an agency of the Government of Canada that is responsible for public health, emergency preparedness and response, and infectious and chronic dis ...

. The antibody work came out of research projects funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) more than a decade ago, and years of funding by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Helen Branswell Helen Branswell is a Canadian infectious diseases and global health reporter at Stat News. Branswell spent fifteen years as a medical reporter at The Canadian Press, where she led coverage of the Ebola, Zika, SARS and swine flu pandemics. She ...

for The Canadian Press. Aug. 5, 201
Experimental Ebola drug based on research discoveries from Canada's national lab
/ref> ZMapp is manufactured in the tobacco plant '' Nicotiana benthamiana'' in the bioproduction process known as "

pharming Pharming is a cyberattack intended to redirect a website's traffic to another, fake site by installing a malicious program on the computer. Pharming can be conducted either by changing the hosts file on a victim's computer or by exploitation of a ...

" by Kentucky BioProcessing, a subsidiary of Reynolds American.

References

{{reflist

External links

Website of Mapp BiopharmaceuticalLongtime vision leads to Ebola serum
(Interview with Larry Zeitlin, August 6, 2014) Companies based in San Diego Health care companies based in California Pharmaceutical companies of the United States