By MARSHA CANRIGHT Correspondent
The blood of seven people who survived the 2007 Ebola outbreak in Uganda may help to cure the lethal disease.
Antibodies from the blood samples have been shown to kill the virus in mice and guinea pigs in a study at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
The human body produces antibodies to attack and stop infections as part of its defenses. The researchers are using these naturally occurring human antibodies as biological drugs to treat the viral infection.
“We were able to isolate a remarkably diverse array of highly potent virus-specific antibodies,” said Alex Bukreyev, professor and virologist at the medical branch.
“They appear to bind to parts of the virus, neutralizing at least three strains of Ebola.”
This significant, possibly lifesaving, research is the fruit of a collaboration between scientists at the medical branch, Vanderbilt University, Scripps Research Institute and Integral Molecular Inc.
The findings are published in the current issue of the prestigious science journal, Cell.
Bukreyev and James Crowe at Vanderbilt University initiated the study jointly three years ago. They are coauthors on the published work.
All the virology work has been done at the medical branch, including the studies to test the antibodies’ ability to neutralize the virus.
“It’s not possible to say exactly when, but this research will lead to a treatment for Ebola in the next several years,” he said.
“Our results provide a roadmap to develop a single antibody-based treatment effective against not only infections caused by Ebola Zaire virus, but also caused by related viruses.”
Future directions for scientific inquiry are twofold: The antibodies will be tested in primates as a next step, and virologists will study the mechanism to better understand precisely how and at what point the antibodies stop the virus.
“The viral life cycle includes multiple steps. We know it binds to a cell surface, but what follows is a complicated process involving various steps resulting in a block of viral replication. We want to find which of the steps allows the antibodies to block the virus,” he said.
Other research using mouse antibody-based treatments has shown to provide protection against Ebola Zaire in animals; but until now, there were no therapeutics based on antibodies from human survivors and no universal treatment able to fight multiple viruses.
Medical branch scientists working on the project include Xiaoli Shen, Philipp Ilinykh and Natalia Kuzmina, all in Bukreyev’s laboratory. Also, Curtis Klages who helped with testing of antibodies in mice and guinea pigs, and Thomas Ksiazek, who works in the BSL4 biocontainment facility of the Galveston National Laboratory and contributed to the analysis.