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Curing Ebola? Promising New Drug is in the Works

By Brian Stallard May 04, 2015 05:58 PM EDT
Ebola

The Ebola outbreak, which made headlines just last year, is slowly-but-surely coming under control, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and public health initiatives. It's no secret that to prevent future outbreaks, experts are scrambling to create an effective vaccine. However, that kind of work takes time, and immunization isn't always available. That's why it's equally good news to hear that, for the first time, a medicinal approach for treating Ebola has seen some success in early trials.

The Ebola outbreak, which made headlines just last year, is slowly but surely coming under control, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and public health initiatives. However, it took a long time and countless deaths to get to this point - something that the WHO says is unacceptable. Now the organization is admitting to partial fault for this disaster, with its investigators and directors quick to say that they will make use of the lessons they have learned moving forward.

WHO Admits it Boggled Ebola Response, Aims to Improve

The Ebola outbreak, which made headlines just last year, is slowly but surely coming under control, according to the World Health Organization and public health initiatives. Now, researchers are saying that there is hope that it will soon never resurface in epidemic proportions again, as an experimental vaccine called VSV-ZEBOV was recently found to be both safe and effective in early human trials.

Ebola Vaccine Sees Early Success in Human Trials

A year into West Africa's Ebola epidemic, the WHO has reported more than 7,500 deaths and nearly 20,000 confirmed cases among humans. And while it's understandable why the media has focused on these tragic numbers, some researchers are saying that we're missing something equally tragic: nearly a third of the world's gorillas and chimpanzees have died from Ebola since the 1990s.

Is Ebola Driving Gorilla Extinction?

Researchers have recently discovered what looks to be the exotic mechanism that allows the Ebola virus to replicate in its host, spreading to the point that it becomes a deadly infection. Understanding this could open up new treatment options that help victims of measles and even rabies as well.

Achilles' Heel of Ebola, Rabies, and Measles Exposed

Experts have decoded the genetic factors that contribute to an Ebola patient's susceptibility to the virus, potentially helping to determine who faces the greatest risk of deadly symptoms.

Resisting Ebola: It's All About Your Genes

Ebola isn't exactly a virus that needs an introduction (explore the history of Ebola here). It has been causing complete disarray in West Africa for the greater part of the last 16 months, jumping from Guinea's most remote regions to its capital, and on to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other bordering countries. Symptoms include severe fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and horrific bleeding from the eyes, ears, mouth, and rectum. This is preceded by a brief period of simple flu-like symptoms, such as weakness and body aches that start at least two days after initial exposure.

That early stage then, is the best time for physicians to tackle the disease, which traditionally only boasts a 50 percent mortality rate. As shown in several imported cases in North America and France, if the disease is caught early enough, the human body - with the help of a suit of modern medication - has a fighting chance. However, if the disease isn't addressed until far later - when it is at its most contagious and most deadly -mortality rates can spike up to a stunning 90 percent, as was seen in Sierra Leone. The result? As of April 11, nearly 11,000 deaths from the Ebola infection have been linked back to the ongoing epidemic's December 2013 roots.

"[While] we can mount a highly effective response to small and medium-sized outbreaks... when faced with an emergency of this scale, our current capacities and systems - national and international - simply have not coped," read a joint statement from the WHO's director-general, deputy director-general and regional directors.

This then suggests that while headway in vaccination development gives us hope, containing a similar outbreak among regions where a vaccine has yet to circulate could remain a major problem. The solution? Rapid deployment of a treatment that can stave off the infection in a head-on scenario. As things stand, there are no approved drugs that can treat or manage the Ebola infection directly. Instead, doctors have simply worked to boost the human immune system response to buy time for patients.

Enter: A new generation of "lipid nanoparticle therapeutic treatements"
A team led by Thomas Geisbert at the University of Texas, in collaboration with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals in Vancouver, Canada, have been developing therapies that can target specific strains of the Ebola virus.

This is achieved through the use of small interfering RNA (siRNA) - short pieces of RNA designed to interrupt the production of key proteins crucial for the virus' survival. And because these RNA pieces fit into Ebola cells like a key in a lock, patients don't have to worry about the inhibitors also disrupting processes in any "friendly" cells. Most importantly, these siRNAs can be redesigned as the Ebola virus evolves, keeping the treatment relevant from generation-to-generation.

And while that certainly sounds effective, the question remains: does really it work? According to a study recently published in the journal Nature, the answer you're looking for is a resounding "yes" - at least for monkeys.

"The candidate treatment was rapidly adapted to target the Makona outbreak strain of Ebola virus," Geisbert explained in a recent release. "We were able to protect all of our nonhuman primates against a lethal Makona Ebola infection when treatment began 3 days following infection."
These promising results have put the siRNA approach on a fast-track for treatment in humans, with patients in Sierra Leone - a country that still reports nine confirmed Ebola cases a week - taking part in an ongoing phase 2 clinical trial.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/14502/20150504/curing-ebola-promising-new-drug-works.htm