Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

Ebola and Marburg blocked in Monkeys

Awesome news from The International Herald Tribune:

Ebola milestone: Disease blocked in monkeys
Scientists trying to develop vaccines against the deadly Marburg and Ebola viruses in Africa are reporting an important milestone, a new type of vaccine that prevents the diseases in monkeys. Successfully immunizing monkeys is an essential step toward producing vaccines for people.

Two new vaccines, one for Marburg and one for Ebola, were 100 percent effective in a study of 12 macaques being published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine. Monkeys given just one shot of the vaccine and later injected with a high dose of the virus did not even get sick. Normally, all the animals would be expected to die.

The Marburg and Ebola viruses are closely related, and in both people and monkeys they cause hemorrhagic fevers that can be fatal within a week. There is no vaccine or treatment for either disease. Death rates in people can be high, sometimes exceeding 80 percent or 90 percent.

Those are two very very scary diseases. The incubation period is so short and the course of the disease is so quick and debilitating that it doesn't spread very far but the chance of someone catching it and then getting on an airplane is always there. Again, the last line of the last paragraph: "Death rates in people can be high, sometimes exceeding 80 percent or 90 percent." How was the vaccine created? Don't tell the lefties or the Enviros (but I repeat myself) as it was done through Genetic Modification. From the same article:

To make the vaccine, the scientists used another virus, VSV, for vesicular stomatitis virus, which causes a mouth disease in cattle but rarely infects people. They chose it because it has a similar genetic structure to the Marburg and Ebola viruses, and because other researchers have had success with it in developing vaccines.

They altered VSV by removing one of its genes - the change makes it harmless - and replacing it with a gene from either the Marburg or Ebola virus. The transplanted gene forced VSV to produce Marburg or Ebola proteins on its surface. The proteins cannot cause illness, but they provoked an immune response that protected the animals from Marburg or Ebola.

Posted by DaveH at June 5, 2005 9:57 PM