Download Media Release

Ebola: Drug cocktail protects primates
against current Ebola strain

Nature


Infectious Disease
& Microbiology
Embargo




London: Wednesday 22 April 2015 18:00 (BST)
New York: Wednesday 22 April 2015 13:00 (EDT)
Tokyo: Thursday 23 April 2015 02:00 (JST)
Sydney: Thursday 23 April 2015 03:00 (AEST)
The first demonstration of successful treatment of the current outbreak strain of Ebola virus
in non-human primates using an experimental drug called TKM-Ebola is reported in a small
study involving six rhesus monkeys, published in Nature this week. Versions of thetherapy
have been used on compassionate grounds in a number of human patients in the current
outbreak, although the efficacy in humans is not known as the experimental drugs have been
used in combination with other treatments. The drug can be adapted to target a specific strain
of Ebola virus and can be produced in as little as eight weeks.
The current Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has been the most deadly occurrence of the
disease reported to date, and highlights the need for treatments that can adapt to different
strains. Althougha number of experimental treatments have been evaluated recently, their
efficacy against the current Makona outbreak strain of Ebola virus has been unclear.
Thomas Geisbert and colleagues take one of the promising treatments, TKM-Ebola — a
cocktail of small interfering RNAs that target specific genes of the Ebola virus — and adapt it
to the current outbreak strain of the virus. They infected six rhesus monkeys with Makona
Ebola virus and show that all three monkeys treated with the new TKM-Ebola cocktail
survived, whereas the untreated animals succumbed to the disease eight or nine days after
infection. The new TKM-Ebola cocktail is now being evaluated for efficacy in Ebola virusinfected patients in Sierra Leone, the authors report.
Article and author details

Lipid nanoparticle siRNA treatment of Ebola-virus-Makona-infected
nonhuman primates
Corresponding Author
Thomas W. Geisbert
University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States
Email: [email protected], Tel: +1 409 266 6906
DOI
10.1038/nature14442
Online paper*
http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature14442
* Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo
ends).
Geographical listings of authors


Canada
& United States