AMES, Iowa- The Ames Company NewLink Genetics is at the forefront of a humanitarian effort to develop a vaccine for the deadly Ebola virus. Today retiring U.S. Senator Tom Harkin met with company officials to check on progress after the company received a portion of an $88 million dollar continuing resolution from Congress.
Dr. Charles Link, the President of NewLink Genetics told reporters his company is working with the Canadian government, the U.S. government, as well as other research companies on testing a vaccine to battle the disease. Link said clinical trials are beginning soon at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The purpose of the trial said Link is to determine dose size.
“Once that dose is determined the plan is to go into west Africa in a large 30,000 person trial,” said Link. The company president said he does not know if any NewLink employees would go to Africa for the large trial. “The groups on the ground right now are from the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease,” said Link. They are working on developing the infrastructure in conjunction with the Liberian government.
Link said the cooperation between the US and Candadian governments as well as the different drug companies is unprecedented. “The humanitarian crisis sort of rules the day here,” said Link. “We’re sharing information, its speeding things along in an unprecedented way.” He noted so many agencies of the governments are also working together. “The humanitarian crisis is first and foremost on our mind,” said Link.
Link said it is unknown how many doses his company will produce. “If it’s a medium size dose we could have between 500,000 and 5 million doses, by the end of summer,” said Link. “If it’s the highest dose required, we’ll only have about 50,000 doses at the end of the year.”
“This is a great example of a small company willing to break down barriers, experiment with new things, new ideas, and sort of push the frontiers of science,” said Senator Harkin. “This company here NewLink is doing everything right, and I think has a real potential for break through.”