Researcher Erica Ollmann Saphire is getting sent Ebola samples faster than she can process them at her Scripps Research Institute lab, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports, so she’s turned to crowdfunding to raise the $100,000 she needs to buy better instruments.
Saphire’s behind the global consortium of researchers that developed the experimental ZMapp serum, the drug believed to have cured the two Americans – Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol – of the disease this summer.
“Soon we will have hundreds of antibodies from humans that survived the virus,” Ollmann Saphire told the UT. “We need to understand why these humans survived and what immune response they made, and this is different from antibodies from a mouse. And we need to do it in weeks or months instead of years.”
The campaign, on the site Crowdrise, says Saphire is searching for more potential treatments for the deadly virus – “And there’s no time to wait,” it says:
Samples are being sent to her lab from around the world, but the number of samples outpaces the ability of her current equipment to process them. Funding for equipment and staff will allow Dr. Saphire to work more aggressively to fight Ebola. At The Scripps Research Institute in California, Dr. Saphire’s lab relies on federal grant dollars, but as the scope of the outbreak expands, so does the need for financial resources. She is in a race against time—and limited funding—as the recent outbreak continues to claim more lives every day.
When this post was published, nearly $22,000 had been donated. When asked why Scripps chose the crowdfunding route, Ollman Saphire said “it empowers the public to invest in what they think is important and where they think the dollars should go.”
