Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute, and Chief Investigator of the trials, holds a phial containing the Ebola vaccine at the Oxford Vaccine Group Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine (CCVTM) in Oxford, southern England
In Photo: Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute, and Chief Investigator of the trials, holds a phial containing the Ebola vaccine at the Oxford Vaccine Group Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine (CCVTM) in Oxford, southern England September 17, 2014. The first volunteer in a fast-tracked British safety trial of an experimental Ebola vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline received the injection on Wednesday, trial organizers said. Reuters/Steve Parsons/Pool

A Chinese pharmaceutical firm that has links with the country's military has developed an experimental Ebola drug. It is hoping federal authorities will immediately grant its approval so it can be marketed the soonest.

Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd developed the drug called JK-05, along with the Institute of Microbiological Epidemiology, a part of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. It has been approved but only for emergency military purposes. Sihuan also admitted during an investor call last week it has yet to undergo clinical trials. The firm said it is working to have the tests started, but if possible through a shorter time than normal processes require. It said JK-05 has shown promise against certain diseases such as influenza and yellow fever.

According to Reuters, it is believed JK-05 could be approved for wider use following a sped-up approval process applied on the SARS vaccine a decade ago. It was the military that also developed that vaccine against SARS. The JK-05 Chinese drug has been tested on mice and gave off good results. The JK-05 drug, according to portal BioPharmaDive, is a "micro-molecular chemical, which selectively contains the RNA polymerase of the Ebola virus to inhibit virus replication."

Che Fengsheng, Sihuan's chairman, said JK-05 has performed strongly during preclinical trials and safety tests in various stages of testing for the last five years. He said the company will submit an application with the Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) before the end of the year.

Wang Hongquan, the Chinese military doctor who invented the drug, said in the same investors call that the Chinese nationals working in Africa who got afflicted with the disease with be the first beneficiaries of the JK-05 experimental drug. He said expanding the drug to non-Chinese require further international approvals.

Reuters said there are at least 10,000 Chinese nationals living in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the countries worst hit by the Ebola virus. There are millions of Chinese nationals living in Africa. The World Health Organization has called the Ebola virus "the most severe biologic threat in the world," with a death rate that has jumped from 50 percent to 70 percent. Latest data released on Tuesday by WHO said there are now 8,914 cases of the disease, resulting in 4,447 deaths.

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