Ebola Research Begins at NEIDL
Original article from BU Today by Art Jahnke August 2, 2018
Eight months after receiving final approval from the Boston Public Health Commission to conduct research at Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4), Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) has begun work with its first Level-4 pathogen, the Ebola virus.
“This is clearly an important step for the NEIDL,” says Ronald B. Corley, NEIDL director and a School of Medicine professor of microbiology. “This will permit us to fulfill our mission of studying emerging pathogens and developing diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for these pathogens, even those that require BSL-4 containment. It has taken a very long time to get to this point, but the time that has passed has not dampened our enthusiasm—and excitement—to be able to start BSL-4 work.”
NEIDL microbiologist Elke Mühlberger says the lab’s first Level-4 projects will examine how the Ebola virus damages cells in the liver, and why it triggers such a powerful inflammatory response. Answers to those questions, she says, could speed the development of a therapy for Ebola virus disease, which sickened tens of thousands of people and led to more than 11,000 deaths in West Africa in a 2014–2016 outbreak, and sickened 59 people and killed 29 in an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo this past May.
Ebola virus causes a rare but life-threatening disease that has become a global public health threat, traveling to the United States and Europe during the 2014 outbreak. There is no available FDA-approved vaccine or therapy for Ebola virus, which along with the related Marburg virus, arrived at NEIDL earlier this week.
Mühlberger, a MED associate professor of microbiology, says the researchers’ plans include at least three projects involving the Ebola and Marburg viruses, all funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which also provides more than $10 million a year to help underwrite the cost of operating the BSL-4 in the NEIDL. The first project, which will look at Ebola’s damage to the liver, will use human liver cells generated from induced pluripotent stem cells at BU’s Center for Regenerative Medicine by stem cell biologist and tissue engineer Gustavo Mostoslavsky, a MED associate professor of medicine and microbiology.