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Ebola Vaccine On The Horizon?

Posted by michael on from the michael-crichton-displeased dept.

coryboehne writes "A highly interesting article on the CBS news website gives some very promising information on a fast acting single-shot Ebola vaccine. This is an important step because it will allow an outbreak of Ebola to be stopped quickly."

8 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. Ebola vaccine exists, but it is inconvenient by KingPrad · · Score: 4, Informative

    They already have an Ebola vaccine that works in monkeys. It isn't convenient enough to use large-scale however. It takes multiple shots spread over months and it takes 8 months to build up real immunity to Ebola.

    It will be good if one of these research teams succeed in making a fast-acting single-shot vaccine. They talked about this on NPR this morning on Morning Edition I think. www.npr.org

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  2. Food and drug admin by brokencomputer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If this vaccine is going to be tested in Africa why does it need approval by the FDA?

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    1. Re:Food and drug admin by aridhol · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because it's being developed in the USA.

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  3. Article error by aridhol · · Score: 2, Informative
    From the article:
    Health workers in Africa -- the only place the few outbreaks have occurred -- might be the most likely recipients of an approved Ebola vaccine.
    Actually, there was an outbreak in Reston, Virginia. My wife is doing her Ph.D work on that strain. But it's not her lab in the article.
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    1. Re:Article error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The incident in Virginia wasn't an outbreak. The strain (now called Ebola Reston) spread through a population of imported monkeys in 1989. Six people seroconverted, but none developed any filovirus-related illness from their exposure to Ebola Reston.

      In order for it to be considered an "outbreak," human beings have to get sick. They didn't.

      Ebola is actually no big deal, immunologically speaking. It's hard to contract, and it requires a massive viral load before the patient becomes symptomatic. Patients that superconvert often die horribly, but the likelihood that any given exposure will turn into a superconversion are miniscule.

  4. Wow. Only 4 comments so far by nortcele · · Score: 2, Funny

    It would appear that Ebola is not "News for Nerds". Geeks are likely only interested in diseases that are contracted other than by human proximity or contact.

  5. pretty cool trick. by fireduck · · Score: 5, Informative

    a more informative write up can be found at nature (there's a link to the actual research at the bottom, for those whose institutions suscribe).

    rather than infect the host with dead/weakened ebola, they took the ebola gene that is responsible for making the coat protein (the capsid which surrounds the nucleic material), and inserted that gene into the adenovirus genome. andenovirus infects cell. ebola gene is activated and starts making lots of ebola coat protein. host response kicks in and starts making antibodies for both adenovirus proteins as well as ebola proteins (apparently adenovirus triggers big host response, although adenovirus really isn't that dangerous). host now has a plethora of ebola antibodies.

    this particular trick should be useful for almost any virus for which the coat protein genes are known.

  6. One-Time Vaccine by Jonsey · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Sure! It's only one shot, and it'll guarentee that you'll never get Ebola again in the rest of your life!"

    ...

    Wait a minute.

    (Humor through obscurity, it's fantastic)

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