Russia is actively developing a vaccine against the Ebola virus

Ebola virus

According to the Minister of Health of Russia Veronika Skvortsova, in the coming month two primers vaccines will be tested. Russia is currently developing four different Ebola vaccines, three of them ahead of schedule.

The study of the Ebola virus has been going on since the times of the USSR. In the 1980s, it was considered as a biological weapon, which served as the start for the start of research and development of a vaccine.

Russian scientists made a significant contribution to the fight against Ebola back in 1996, when they presented six poster presentations at a scientific conference. The most serious breakthrough was the study of the genetic basis of Ebola virulence . Previously it was thought that this virus affects only humans and primates. Scientists managed to infect guinea pigs, which in 2000 helped identify two nucleotide substitutions (mutations) that determine the virulence factor.
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In the case of Ebola, standard vaccine approaches do not work. Studies began with infection of the newborn mice, which by the 10–11th day died, their brains were taken from them and a virus-containing suspension was obtained. By adding formalin, a very dirty prototype of a vaccine with a killed virus was obtained. After virologists began to use the technique with infection of cell cultures of the same formalin. The type of vaccine thus obtained did not protect laboratory animals from Ebola. Even when receiving a highly purified and highly concentrated drug of the virus, which, logically, was a more powerful vaccine, the protection was either very weak, or was completely absent.

It turned out that when formalin is added, denaturation of the surface protein occurs, which is responsible for the production of neutralizing antibodies, and two of the seven viral proteins have the ability to block the production of interferon and interfere with the immune response.

According to virologists, a working vaccine can only be recombinant. For its creation, the carrier is taken in the form of another virus and the surface protein of the Ebola virus is “put on” using genetic engineering methods. Intrusion of a modified virus into a cell can trigger the production of antibodies, including against the Ebola surface protein, which will lead to the development of immunity.

It was about the close start of tests of such genetic engineering vaccines and declared the Minister of Health of the Russian Federation. The third Russian development is based on an inactivated virus and is already being tested in primates. Such diversity is understandable - Russia is one of the leading countries in the field of virology and has a large number of developments in this field.

Via Gazeta.ru