大象传媒

The coronavirus pandemic may have distracted us from other viral threats, but they are still there. There are increasing reports of Ebola fever, once a rarity, which kills around half of its victims through uncontrollable internal bleeding. There is an approved vaccine that prevents Ebola, but given the sporadic way the virus emerges, and the difficulties of mass vaccination progammes, another approach is to develop lab-grown antibodies, known as monoclonals, which can be administered to patients to reinforce their own immune response.

Erica Ollmann Saphire from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology describes her work developing new treatments for Ebola. She is looking to develop drugs which work not just on Ebola but also a range of related viruses, and that can be given to infected patients to help them fight off the infection. Trials in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been positive - "which show that antibody therapies could improve survival and lessen disease symptoms. That was the first time that Ebola was shown to be treatable. It had gone from an untreatable to a treatable infection."

Photo: A 3-D rendered image of Ebola virus Credit: Getty Images