A team of researchers led by Gaya Amarasinghe, associate professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine, was recently awarded a $13 million NIH grant to study the replication process of the Ebola virus. The research team aims to understand the enzyme complex that the virus uses to replicate. While their main goal is not to discover a cure to the deadly virus, they do expect that their findings will lead to development of drugs that can treat it. According to Dr. Amarasinghe, “the replication complex is the only enzyme this virus has, and traditionally enzymes are good drug targets.”
Ebola virus is severe and often fatal, with death rates as high as 90 percent, according to the WHO. Unfortunately there are not yet any approved vaccines or specific drugs. The Ebola virus used to be mostly limited to small outbreaks in central Africa, but the large epidemic that began in 2014 in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone has brought attention to this virus' potential impact.
“My lab has been studying Ebola for some time, but the epidemic from 2014 to 2016 showed us that it has significant potential to impact global health,” said Dr. Amarasinghe. “As we watched the epidemic unfold, I think we also realized that there’s a lot we don’t know about the basic biology of the virus, and that limits our ability to find ways to target it therapeutically.”
The grant was provided by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Other grants recently given to Washington University life science researchers include:
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