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AN EFFECTIVE vaccine against the feared Ebola virus may be on the cards, say
American scientists who have succeeded in protecting mice against the deadly
disease. Normally, people or animals infected with Ebola bleed to death.

Producing a vaccine against this extremely infectious virus has proved doubly
difficult. The viral reservoir鈥攑robably a jungle animal鈥攈as not been
identified. Moreover, victims of the infection cannot seem to produce
significant numbers of protective antibodies against the only protein on the
surface of the virus, called membrane-anchored glycoprotein (GP).

But a research team led by Julie Wilson at the high-security US Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Maryland has now
succeeded in generating large numbers of antibodies against a variety of Ebola
strains. When the researchers injected mice with GP, the animals made some
immune cells that expressed antibodies. These were fused with mouse cancer
cells, which then churned out a constant supply of antibodies, that the team
collected to make vaccines.

Mice immunised with these antibodies 24 hours before an injection of Ebola
managed to fight off infection. And some types of antibody protected the mice
even if given two days after inoculation with the virus. Futher tests showed
that some of the antibodies bound to all the Ebola strains which cause disease
in people.

Team member Mary Kate Hart says the next step is to test the antibodies in
other animal models. She warns that it will take several years to produce a
human vaccine.