The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced a discovery last week that a single monoclonal antibody isolated from a human Ebola virus disease survivor protected non-human primates from the virus.
The antibody can now advance to testing in humans as a potential treatment for Ebola. Currently, there are no licensed treatments for the disease, which caused more than 11,000 deaths during a recent outbreak in West Africa.
NIAID researchers obtained blood samples from a survivor of the 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was then discovered that the survivor retained the necessary antibodies against Ebola. Investigators from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Switzerland isolated specific antibodies for potential use as a therapeutic for Ebola infection. From there, investigators from the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases administered a lethal dose of Zaire ebolavirus to four rhesus monkeys, waited five days, and then treated three of the macaques with daily intravenous injection of the monoclonal antibody, known as mAb114, for three days. The untreated control macaque eventually died while the treatment group survived and remained free from symptoms.
NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health, studies the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases and develops cures for these ailments.
The findings were published in the journal Science on Feb 25.