Tekmira will resume safety study of Ebola drug within weeks

Canadian drugmaker Tekmira Pharmaceuticals said Friday it will restart a study of an experimental Ebola treatment in the coming weeks.

The company said the Food and Drug Administration will allow it to administer the drug, called TKM-Ebola, to a small number of healthy people once a day for a one-week safety trial. Some patients in the trial will receive TKM-Ebola and the rest will get a placebo injection.

The company said it expects results from the study in the second half of 2015.

Shares of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp. lost 15 cents to $17.45 in midday trading.

TKM-Ebola is designed to work by blocking genes that help the virus reproduce and spread. Tekmira started giving single doses to healthy people in 2014, but the FDA stopped the study in July because it wanted more information about the safety higher doses.

The agency allowed Tekmira to continue giving the drug to patients who were infected with the Ebola virus.

Tekmira does not have any approved drugs, and it is running early-stage studies of a treatment for the liver-damaging hepatitis B virus.

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