WASHINGTON – Today, in advance of a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee markup, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) - a member of the HELP Committee - reaffirmed his support for a bill to incentivize the development of treatments and vaccines for Ebola. The legislation would add the disease to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) priority review voucher program - an initiative designed to help speed the development of new drugs for neglected tropical diseases. Ebola is not currently listed as a qualifying tropical disease.

The bill would add Ebola to FDA’s priority review voucher program, which Congress first authorized in 2007 to promote the development of new treatments and vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. Under the program, a developer of a treatment for a qualifying tropical disease receives a voucher for FDA priority review to be used with a second product of its choice, or this voucher can be sold. This would directly benefit Connecticut companies, like Meriden’s Protein Sciences, that are in the process of developing Ebola vaccines.

However, because Ebola is not considered a qualifying disease under current law, developers of Ebola treatments and vaccines, like Protein Sciences, currently do not qualify for the program. This bill would change that and immediately add Ebola to the program – a step that would add another tool to help fight Ebola. The bill also makes changes to improve the functioning of the program and allow FDA to respond more efficiently to infectious disease ‎threats in the future.

“Ebola has taken thousands of lives in West Africa and decimated already weak public health systems in these countries. Without treatments and vaccines, this epidemic will continue to spread,” said Murphy. “This bill will encourage drug developers, like Protein Sciences in Meriden, to continue their work to make drugs that can stop Ebola, and I’m confident that this effort will go a long way in the fight against this public health nightmare."

“Entrepreneurial companies like Protein Sciences are devoting significant time and effort to developing an Ebola vaccine without financial support because our overriding purpose is to save lives,” said Dan Adams, Executive Chairman and Global Head of Development for the Protein Sciences Corporation. “Our platform recombinant technology allows us to develop vaccines against extremely dangerous viruses like Ebola safely, quickly and at relatively low cost. However, as a small company we cannot continue to do this without support since there is no clear commercial market for the vaccine. The proposed law, which would give us a voucher for FDA priority review for a future product, would encourage us to continue our work demonstrating that the Government is doing what it can to help us.”

The cosponsors of the bill include U.S. Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

In the last month, Murphy called on several congressional committees to release funding to fight the Ebola epidemic, and urged the administration to resist a travel ban as well as authorize trained and protected US military personnel to treat Ebola patients.