It’s not far-fetched to think that Ebola could be used as an agent of bioterrorism, according to researchers working on vaccines and treatments for the virus.
In theory, a terrorist could mass disseminate the hemorrhagic virus by small particle aerosol. It is a possible but unlikely scenario because executing such an attack would take an incredible amount of technology and financing. However, someone with basic skills in virology could infect only a few people with Ebola, and the event would cause worldwide havoc.
“Even if this act of terrorism killed only a small number of people, it’s the panic, the fear, and the economic issues caused by it that would be concerning,” said Thomas Geisbert, a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and a member of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity.
But bioterrorism loses its appeal when there are treatment options at hand, Geisbert said.
Geisbert is partnering with scientists from Profectus Biosciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Mapp Biopharmaceutical and Genevant Sciences Corporation to develop rapid-acting vaccines and broad-spectrum treatments for the highly-lethal Ebola and Marburg viruses.
The National Institutes of Health awarded the team $35 million in April to continue its research. The researchers are only a few years away from completing the development of a candidate drug, MBP134, which is an antibody cocktail that can treat Ebola even in a person with late-stage infection. The researchers hope the drug will be available in three years.
Ebola wasn’t always the public health concern that it is now. In the last half of the 20th century, outbreaks of Ebola appeared small and sporadic in West Africa, where the virus is endemic. It wasn’t until the major outbreak of 2013 to 2016, where 11,310 reported deaths occurred, that researchers began to make serious headway on vaccines and treatment options. The experimental Ebola vaccine created by Merck & Co. currently being administered in the Democratic Republic of Congo is combating the second largest Ebola outbreak in history. Much of the initial work toward Merck’s Ebola vaccine was conducted by Geisbert and fellow researcher Heinz Feldmann.
From a bioterrorism perspective, Ebola was considered a threat as far back as the 1980s and 1990s, although major outbreaks of the virus weren’t occurring in Africa during that period. Because the Soviet Union was developing Ebola and Marburg viruses to be used as bioweapons, the U.S. Army funded research to defend against this potential bioterrorism threat.
“And then 9/11 really changed everything,” Geisbert said. “There was a realization that some of these different terrorist groups could use bioterrorism.”
One week after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to news media offices and to Democratic U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores killed five people and infected 17 others.
Amidst the reality of these attacks, funding became a greater priority, and in the mid 2000s, the NIH began to make available more research dollars for Ebola and Marburg. Scientists like Geisbert started partnering with small biotech companies to come up with countermeasures against these pathogens.
When the media began heavily covering the 2013 to 2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, as well as the American patients who had contracted the virus, the public pushed for more resources toward combating Ebola.
However, Ebola research is an expensive, complicated endeavor. It often takes three times longer to conduct Ebola studies due to the strict regulations scientists must follow in a biosafety level 4 laboratory. Experiments involving monkeys are also expensive, as each primate costs thousands of dollars. However, these animal experiments are essential because conducting laboratory Ebola research on humans is nearly impossible given the ethical questions. These impediments made advancing vaccines and treatments for Ebola a 15- to 20-year process.
Yet, there is new hope. The MBP134 drug Geisbert and his colleagues have created can treat the three major strains of Ebola. Geisbert explains it works by binding to key areas on the Ebola protein which then keeps Ebola from replicating.
“We’re trying to develop drugs that when somebody is already sick, we can at least stop the virus from growing at that point,” Geisbert said. “This whole thing is a race with the clock for any of these drugs.”