Experimental drug likely saved Ebola patients

In short, an *extremely* experimental drug – as in, tested on what looks like around a dozen Rhesus monkeys – was flown in to Liberia and administered to two American doctors who had contracted (and were seemingly dying from) Ebola. Both doctors have experience “miraculous” improvements.

It *may* be that there is a possibly effective treatment for Ebola on the horizon. Let the conspiracy theorizing begin!

As for how the drug was prepared, it’s a wow-I-never-woulda-thought-of-that process if there ever was one:

To get the material they needed, the researchers turned to a well established technology called monoclonal antibody production. They injected mice with the Ebola glycoprotein and then fused individual antibody-producing cells with a cancer cell. This process produced a cell that continued to divide in culture, making a single type of antibody. Some of the antibodies probably recognized cold and flu viruses, so the researchers had to screen for cells that made Ebola-specific antibodies. They identified three that stuck to different parts of the Ebola glycoprotein.

The problem at this point was that the antibodies were from mice. If injected into humans, the human immune system would recognize the antibodies as foreign and start an immune response against the treatment. So Mapp cloned the genes for these antibodies and then swapped out parts, replacing parts of the mouse version with the human portion of the same gene and carefully avoiding alterations in the parts that recognize the Ebola protein.

The researchers then needed to produce the antibodies in large quantities. So they managed to insert the genes into cells from a tobacco plant, which can be grown in large numbers with little fuss. The potential therapy was ready for testing.