The researchers, whose paper is published online today in Science Express, identified two cellular enzymes Ebola virus must have to reproduce. When those enzymes are blocked, the virus loses most of its infectivity, the scientists found.
Ebola virus, like the Marburg virus now alarming Angola, is a filovirus, a family of viruses that cause severe and frequently fatal hemorrhagic fevers. "Finding medical countermeasures for viral hemorrhagic fevers is a global public health priority because not only do these diseases occur naturally but they also have the potential to be unleashed by bioterrorists," says NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.
"This new research sheds light on the mechanism Ebola virus uses to enter cells," notes NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "These findings raise the possibility of a broad-spectrum antiviral therapy that could be effective against multiple hemorrhagic fever viruses."
Senior author James M. Cunningham, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and his colleagues discovered two cellular enzymes that the Ebola virus co-opts and uses to cut up one of the virus' surface proteins. Once this protein is snipped apart, the virus is free to begin multiplying. The scientists applied broad-spectrum enzyme inhibitors to mammalian cells before exposing them to Ebola virus. When one specific cellular enzyme, cathepsin B, was inhibited, the infectivity of Ebola virus dropped to near zero. An accessory role is played by another cellular enzyme, cathepsin L, the scientists determined.
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Contact: Anne A. Oplinger
aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov
301-402-1663
NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
14-Apr-2005