Solutions

REUTERS                                                     Nov. 7, 2014
By Sharon Begley

NEW YORK - A group of scientists including three Nobel laureates in medicine has proposed that U.S. health officials chart a new path to developing Ebola drugs and vaccines by harnessing antibodies produced by survivors of the deadly outbreak.

The proposal builds on the use of "convalescent serum," or survivors' blood, which has been given to at least four U.S. Ebola patients who then recovered from the virus. It is based on an approach called passive immunization, which has been used since the 19th century to treat diseases such as diphtheria but has been largely surpassed by vaccination.

The scientists propose using new genetic and other technologies to find hundreds or thousands of different Ebola antibodies, determine their genetic recipe, grow them in commercial quantities and combine them into a single treatment analogous to the multi-drug cocktails that treat HIV-AIDS.

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http://www.trust.org/item/20141107142347-pfohr

By Todd Ackerman                                                                           Nov. 5, 2014

... researchers at the University of Texas-Austin have developed a nasal spray vaccine that has protected monkeys against the deadly Ebola virus even a year after immunization.

The vaccine, a genetically engineered cold virus containing a tiny portion of Ebola DNA, saved 100 percent of monkeys who got a single spray through the nose in a new UT study. Injecting the vaccine only saved the lives of about 50 percent.

"The main advantage is the long-lasting protection after a single inhaled dose," Maria Croyle, a  professor of pharmaceutics and the study's principal investigator, said in a statement. "This is important since the longevity of other vaccines for Ebola (hasn't been) fully evaluated....

TIME MAGAZINE                                         Nov. 5, 2014

by Alice Park

As the world waits for new treatrments and a vaccine. doctors in Guinea have found the best way to help patients survive Ebola.

... from the tragic illness and mortality emerge some important lessons from the region.The latest, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, details the cases that first appeared in Guinea’s capital city of Conakry between March and April. Unlike in other parts of the region, where the mortality rate from Ebola averages around 60% to 70%, in Conakry it has remained around 43%.

NEW YORK TIMES                                  Nov. 5, 2014
By ANDREW POLLACK

Searching for a new way to attack Ebola, companies and academic researchers are now racing to develop faster and easier tests for determining whether someone has the disease.

A researcher checks an Ebola diagnostic test in Marcoule, France.  Credit Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters

Such tests might require only a few drops of blood rather than a test tube of it, and provide the answer on the spot, without having to send the sample to a laboratory.