Crowdfunding to test cancer drug on Ebola

Biotechnology company OncoSynergy, a spin-out from the University of California, San Francisco, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to enable studies of an experimental cancer drug in Ebola infection. It is hoped that the drug may be able to combat the Ebola crisis in west Africa, which has already claimed almost 1500 lives.

OncoSynergy’s monoclonal antibody drug candidate, OS2966, is currently being investigated in multiple models of highly aggressive cancers. The drug inhibits CD29, a major cellular adhesion receptor fundamental to cancer progression - which is also hijacked by the Ebola virus during infection. The proposed studies will examine whether OS2966 can block Ebola infection in cultured human vascular cells.

“We have a unique opportunity to potentially effect a major impact on the current global Ebola crisis,” said OncoSynergy Founder and CEO Dr W Shawn Carbonell. “However, as a seed-stage biotech start-up with six employees, we don’t have the bandwidth to take on projects beyond our central mission focused on cancer.”

Science Exchange, an online marketplace for scientific collaboration, is assisting on the study, while crowdfunding platform Experiment is hosting the fundraising campaign. OncoSynergy aims to raise $10,000 to cover the costs of the experiments and eventual publication in an open-access journal.

“We are teaming up with Science Exchange and Experiment to accomplish the initial experiments, which are an important first step towards possible clinical testing of OS2966,” said Dr Carbonell. “We now need the public’s help to fund the work so we can start as soon as possible.”

OncoSynergy has potentially dozens of OS2966 doses on hand should the project advance to human testing. Dr Carbonell noted that the drug can be readily manufactured at clinical scale in a matter of weeks by any commercial biologics facility.

To fund the project, visit https://experiment.com/projects/can-we-defeat-ebola-with-an-experimental-cancer-drug.

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