Headquarters | , |
---|---|
Key people | Larry Zeitlin (President) Kevin Whaley (CEO) [1] |
Products | Biopharmaceuticals |
Subsidiaries | LeafBio |
Website |
mappbio |
Mapp Biopharmaceutical is an American pharmaceutical company founded in 2003 by Larry Zeitlin and Kevin Whaley. [2] Mapp Biopharmaceutical is based in San Diego, California. It is responsible for the research and development of ZMapp, a drug which is still[ when?] under development and comprises three humanized monoclonal antibodies used as a treatment for Ebola virus disease. [3] [4] The drug was first tested in humans during the 2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak.
The ZMapp drug is a result of the collaboration between Mapp Biopharmaceutical, LeafBio (the commercial arm of Mapp Biopharmaceutical), [5] Defyrus Inc. ( Toronto), the U.S. government, and the Public Health Agency of Canada. [3] The antibody work came out of research projects funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) more than a decade ago, [1] and years of funding by the Public Health Agency of Canada. [6] ZMapp is manufactured in the tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana in the bioproduction process known as " pharming" by Kentucky BioProcessing, a subsidiary of Reynolds American. [7] [8] [9]