Good news for monkeys — from Researchers Develop Effective Ebola Vaccine:
U.S. government researchers said on Wednesday they had developed a vaccine that protected monkeys against Ebola virus with a single dose — offering a new way to stop an outbreak of the deadly disease.
OK, it’s good news all around:
The vaccine was made using a new approach that should work against a range of other viruses, as well, the researchers said. And the new technology might offer a quick way to develop an instant vaccine against new infections, such as SARS, or even a biological weapon.
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Nabel and colleagues started with a common virus called an adenovirus — the culprit behind many cases of the common cold and some more serious infections as well. They added one piece of DNA from the Ebola virus — the glycoprotein.Traditional vaccines use a whole virus, live, killed or weakened, to help the immune system recognize the invader. The DNA vaccine relies on a strong immune response to the adenovirus, and the immune system recognizes the Ebola virus simply by recognizing the glycoprotein.
To the researchers’ surprise, monkeys given a single jab with this vaccine were 100 percent protected from what should have been a deadly dose of Ebola, they report in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.