Attacking Ebola
In separate papers published online in Nature, two research teams report identifying a critical protein that Ebola virus exploits to cause deadly infections. The protein target is an essential element through which the virus enters living cells to cause disease. The first study was led by four senior scientists: Sean Whelan, associate professor of microbiology and immunobiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS); Kartik Chandran, assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine; John Dye at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID); and Thijn Brummelkamp, originally at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and now at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. The second study was led by James Cunningham, an HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and co-authored by Chandran. “This research identifies a critical cellular protein that the Ebola virus needs to cause infection and disease,” explained Whelan, who is also co-director of the HMS...