Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation, an industry-leading therapeutic solutions company focussed on developing a cure for chronic hepatitis B virus infection (HBV), announced that TKM-Ebola-Guinea will be evaluated for efficacy in Ebola virus infected patients in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Patient recruitment has been initiated.

The phase II single arm trial called RAPIDE (Rapid Assessment of Potential Interventions & Drugs for Ebola) is open-label with a concurrent observational study of Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone. Study results are expected in the second half of 2015.

The University of Oxford, which is the representative of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) is responsible for conducting the Phase II study, with funding provide by the Wellcome Trust.

"We have been working judiciously these last few months to finalize a suitable clinical trial protocol and to receive all the necessary ethics and regulatory approvals to enable TKM-Ebola-Guinea to be clinically evaluated in patients in Sierra Leone," says Dr. Mark J. Murray, Tekmira's president and chief executive officer. "This study will enable us to gather important clinical data that may help us to determine whether TKM-Ebola-Guinea is a promising treatment for patients infected with Ebola virus disease. We expect the results of the study to help inform us on the potential further development of this important therapeutic."

Dr. Murray adds, "New cases of Ebola virus disease infections are still occurring, and many people remain infected, which reinforces the critical need for effective therapeutics against this deadly disease. If we are eventually successful in obtaining market approval of TKM-Ebola-Guinea, the company would provide patients a therapeutic option for this terrible disease and in addition this may place the company on a path to receive a Tropical Disease Priority Review Voucher from the US FDA that we can apply to another product in development to support expedited approval."

The Ebola-Guinea strain is known as "Ebola virus Makona" the virus responsible for the current outbreak in West Africa. This strain diverges slightly from the Kikwit strain, which was the original target of TKM-Ebola. The genomic sequence of the Ebola-Guinea strain was determined from several viral isolates and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 20141. Tekmira developed a modified RNAi therapeutic, based on the Company's original TKM-Ebola investigational therapeutic, to specifically target Ebola-Guinea. The new product, termed TKM-Ebola-Guinea, is designed to match the genomic sequence exactly, with two RNAi triggers. The ability to rapidly and accurately match the evolving genetic sequences of emerging infectious agents is one of the powerful features of RNAi therapeutics.

Developed by the US FDA in 2007 under the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act ("FDAAA"), a Priority Review Voucher (PRV) is an incentive for companies to invest in new drugs and vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. Ebola virus disease was recently added to the PRV program. A PRV entitles the holder to a "priority review" reducing the target review time for a New Drug Application from 10 months to 6 months. Plus, the PRV permits a voucher to be sold—"transferred"—an unlimited number of times, before eventual use.

RNAi therapeutics have the potential to treat a number of human diseases by "silencing" disease causing genes. The discoverers of RNAi, a gene silencing mechanism used by all cells, were awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi trigger molecules often require delivery technology to be effective as therapeutics. Tekmira believes its LNP technology represents the most advanced and widely adopted delivery technology for the systemic delivery of RNAi triggers. Tekmira's LNP platform is being utilized in multiple clinical trials in various disease areas by Tekmira and its partners. Tekmira's LNP technology (formerly referred to as stable nucleic acid-lipid particles or SNALP) encapsulates RNAi triggers with high efficiency in uniform lipid nanoparticles that are effective in delivering these therapeutic compounds to disease sites. Tekmira's LNP formulations are manufactured by a proprietary method which is robust, scalable and highly reproducible, and LNP-based products have been reviewed by multiple regulatory agencies for use in clinical trials. LNP formulations comprise several lipid components that can be adjusted to suit the specific application.

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. We provide more than £700 million a year to support bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine. Our investment portfolio gives us the independence to support such transformative work as the sequencing and understanding of the human genome, research that established front-line drugs for malaria, and Wellcome Collection, our free venue for the incurably curious that explores medicine, life and art.

Oxford University's Medical Sciences Division is one of the largest biomedical research centres in Europe, with over 2,500 people involved in research and more than 2,800 students. The University is rated the best in the world for medicine, and it is home to the UK's top-ranked medical school. From the genetic and molecular basis of disease to the latest advances in neuroscience, Oxford is at the forefront of medical research. It has one of the largest clinical trial portfolios in the UK and great expertise in taking discoveries from the lab into the clinic. Partnerships with the local NHS Trusts enable patients to benefit from close links between medical research and healthcare delivery. A great strength of Oxford medicine is its long-standing network of clinical research units in Asia and Africa, enabling world-leading research on the most pressing global health challenges such as malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS and flu. Oxford is also renowned for its large-scale studies which examine the role of factors such as smoking, alcohol and diet on cancer, heart disease and other conditions.