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New Ebola Drug 100% Effective In Monkeys

Posted by Soulskill on from the quick-somebody-call-hoffman dept.

TrisexualPuppy writes "A team of scientists at Boston University has created a cure for the Ebola virus, first discovered in 1976. After setting the correct dosages, all monkeys tested with the vaccine survived with only mild effects. No tests have been performed on humans yet, as outbreaks happen infrequently and are difficult to track. Quoting NPR: '[The drug] contains snippets of RNA derived from three of the virus's seven genes. That "payload" is packaged in protective packets of nucleic acid and fat molecules. These little stealth missiles attach to the Ebola virus's replication machinery, "silencing" the genes from which they were derived. That prevents the virus from making more viruses.'"

5 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. This brings to mind... by eexaa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...wouldn't this be a great generic treatment for all infections by viruses?

    If not, I'd like to know the reason.

    1. Re:This brings to mind... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It sounds similar to Phage Therapy, long story short you have to identify and isolate the virus in question before you can treat it, because there are so many variants of most viruses you need tons of phages to treat what we the masses think of as a single virus. If Ebola doesn't change too much, or if they found critical parts of Ebola that never change between variants, it might be possible to attack those, but targeted approaches don't work against disparate viruses.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:This brings to mind... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It sounds similar to Phage Therapy, long story short you have to identify and isolate the virus in question before you can treat it, because there are so many variants of most viruses you need tons of phages to treat what we the masses think of as a single virus. If Ebola doesn't change too much, or if they found critical parts of Ebola that never change between variants, it might be possible to attack those, but targeted approaches don't work against disparate viruses.

      What if one day we'll be able to synthesize a therapy while the patient is waiting in the waiting room? Just consider the leaps in DNA sequencing. Once a tedious manual process where we were lucky to decipher a few dozen nucleotides in a row, now a technology with the prospect of sequencing a person's whole DNA for a few dozen bucks. (I admit that I'm not aware of the precise state of the art today.) A century from now - if our civilization won't collapse in the meantime - we might be able to synthesize a viral disease killer for a virus we've never seen before in a few hours. Don't underestimate clever people with fast supercomputers and vast databases. Well, it this is a pipe dream, certainly much less so than, say, manned interstellar travel.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Re:first post? by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Also, the people that will need the drug have little or no ability to pay for it. It takes A LOT of money to get a drug approved, if the market for the drug itself is not there then the work just does not get done. The technique used will be applied to other, more profitable issues, so some good comes of it in the end.
    It might be worthwhile to give drug companies a tax break for donating information that leads to effective cures for less profitable conditions... I'm sure there are many substances that have shown potential to help conditions that only have a few tens of thousands of sufferers or have many very poor sufferers and are thus a net loss if developed via normal channels.

    --
    You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
  3. Problems with curing all diseases/viruses by cjjjer · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Viruses and disease is a way for mother nature to keep the balance of life, by taking this away we risk the possibility of killing off our species even faster. I only hope that I live long enough to watch 90% of the human population die because of our stupidity even though I may die as well it will be epic...