The emergence of an Ebola variant in Central Africa has rendered current vaccines obsolete, as they were designed only for the Zaire strain. This new pathogen, with mutations in the surface glycoprotein, evades the immune response induced by approved drugs. The scientific community faces a race against time to develop tools that cover a broader spectrum of strains, while local health systems attempt to contain an outbreak that already shows high lethality.
Genomic sequencing reveals targets for new antivirals 🧬
Phylogenetic analyses of patient samples indicate that the new variant has five substitutions in the VP35 protein, key for suppressing the host's antiviral response. Teams from the Marburg Institute of Virology have identified conserved regions in the RNA polymerase as potential targets for broad-spectrum drugs. Compounds such as remdesivir and favipiravir are being tested in cell cultures, although preliminary results show a reduced efficacy of 30% against the mutant strain.
Survival manual: what we learned from the last outbreak (and forgot) 😅
After the 2014 scare, we promised to invest in surveillance and alert systems. But as always, memory is short and budgets are even shorter. Now we find that the solution is not just one vaccine, but a dozen of them, and a team of epidemiologists with GPS to track mutations. Meanwhile, the virus laughs at our monoclonal antibodies and keeps mutating as carefree as ever. At least this time we know that toilet paper is useless.