Ebola Treatment Massively Cuts Death Rate, But It’s No Cure
Original article from Futurity by , 2019
In a recent clinical trial, a triple-antibody cocktail reduced the mortality rate for the deadly Ebola virus by stunning amounts—from 70% to as low as a reported 6% when given to patients early enough, researchers report.
Robert Davey vividly remembers the first time he saw the power of the cocktail, called REGN-EB3, which the pharmaceutical company Regeneron makes. He was working at Texas Biomedical Research Institute, before he and his team moved to the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). Both labs are among only a handful in the US with Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) status, the highest level of biosafety containment used for infectious agents that pose extreme danger to humans.
“We tested the Regeneron treatment in a guinea pig model of the disease and we found that REGN-EB3 saved the guinea pigs from Ebola infection,” says Davey, now a microbiologist at NEIDL and the Boston University’s School of Medicine.
“Then, we took it to a higher animal model, monkeys, and we found that the antibody mixture was a miraculous cure. The animals were quite ill, and we gave them the treatment and most recovered overnight. We said it was like a miracle, that’s how it felt to see it.”
About two-thirds of people infected with the Zaire strain of Ebola have died during the current Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) outbreak. But Regeneron’s REGN-EB3 and another antibody-based therapeutic called mAb114, which Ridgeback Biotherapeutics makes, have drastically improved the survival rates. Now, about two-thirds of people treated with either drug survive Ebola infection.
“We have finally reached a point where we have therapeutic influence over Ebola,” says Anthony Griffiths, a NEIDL researcher and an associate professor of microbiology.
But Griffiths, Davey, and others caution that treating Ebola is a long way from curing it.