Estonian and Finnish companies developing Ebola drug

These are expected to prevent viral infection or treat people who are already infected.

Founder and CEO of Icosagen, Tartu University Professor of Biomedical technology Mart Ustav said that they would start developing the vaccine as soon as possible and hoped to reach testing in 2016.

Ustav did not wish to forecast when the medicine could come to the market.

Delfi.ee wrote that Icosagen’s patented QMCF technology has been successfully licensed to a number of large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, which are used to develop and produce virus-like particles, antibodies, recombinant proteins, and other biological medicines.

“As our technology can be well applied for Ebola vaccine development, we feel an obligation to participate in the fight against Ebola,” said Ustav. “I am confident that we can contribute, with our joint work, to preventing Ebola virus infection and treatment of the disease.”

In the development, Tartu University Institute of Technology, Laboratory of Applied Virology will participate. In the clinical stage of testing vaccines and biological therapeutics, partners from France and Switzerland will join the project.