farther to become the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
One factor might be that this Ebola virus has a lower mortality rate. It kills about 50 percent of those infected, according to the CDC.
Other clues may lie in a study published today in the journal Science. Scientists at the Broad Institute and Harvard University, working with Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, found more than 300 genetic changes that make the 2014 Ebola virus genomes distinct from the viral genomes analyzed in previous Ebola outbreaks.
“One of the things we will be doing in my lab is looking at all those mutations” to see if there is something there that makes the virus replicate more easily, or makes it easier for the virus to suppress an immune response, Saphire said. Every Ebola lab in the world also has been identifying antibodies that bind to the surface of the Ebola virus, and forwarding their findings to Saphire’s lab.
With more information like this, she said it may be possible to identify new or different combinations of antibodies that work more effectively to stop Ebola. All it takes is time and money. If only there were more of both.
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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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