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'Safe Ebola' Created for Research

Posted by Zonk on from the makes-me-so-happy-to-be-living-in-the-same-city dept.

Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"

1 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Before you panic by TheMeuge · · Score: 5, Informative

    Before everyone panics, just think for a second. Ebola is NOT AIRBORNE. It is transmitted by direct contact and bodily fluids. It's classified as BSL4 because it's so deadly once you actually get it, not due to its ease of transmission.

    Currently, only a few groups have access to BSL4 laboratories, and this has been severely hampering Ebola research. If by taking out the VP30 gene they have reduced the pathogenicity of the virus enough to get the authorities to apply the more appropriate BSL3 tag to the mutant strain, they've succeeded in making an important stride towards expanding the field, while introducing a very minimal risk of an outbreak.

    I don't think anyone is talking about drinking the recombinant virus, but merely making it BSL3 instead of BSL4... or even just reducing the risk of working with Ebola under BSL4 conditions.