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Biosecurity Briefing
Ebola Virus Made Safe to Work With in Laboratories By Crystal Franco, January 25, 2008 On January 22, 2008, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study by Peter Halfmann, et al., describing the generation of a new research strain of Ebola virus which would be “safe” to handle “outside of a biosafety level-4 facility and will stimulate critical studies on the [Ebola virus (EBOV)] life cycle.”1 Ebola viruses and the “closely related” Marburg viruses belong to the Filoviridae family and cause hemorrhagic fevers in humans and non-human primates.1 Ebola is highly virulent, there are currently no available vaccines or treatments for Ebola, and the fatality rate for the disease normally ranges from 50-90%; all of these factors pose challenges for laboratory research on the virus.2 According to the PNAS study, wild-type Ebola viruses contain a gene called VP30 which encodes a “transcription factor” protein “essential for viral replication and transcription.”1 Without this protein, the virus cannot replicate and grow in normal human and non-human primate cells. So, Halfmann and colleagues created an Ebola strain which “expresses a reporter gene instead of the VP30 gene,” and as explained in an article in ScienceDaily on January 22, they also created a cell line “that express[es] the VP30 protein [so] the virus can grow in those cells because the missing protein is provided by the cell."3 The study authors emphasize that EBOVs lacking the VP30 gene not only are safe to work with in a lab, but also are valuable for research purposes because they are “indistinguishable…from wild-type virus and are genetically stable.” The researchers believe that these findings will open “new opportunities for study of the EBOV life cycle and for the identification of effective antiviral compounds,” and they are confident that “EBOVs lacking the VP30 gene are also candidates for vaccine development.”1 For more information on Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses, see the Center for Biosecurity Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Fact Sheet.2 References
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