New breakthrough achieved in inhibiting Ebola virus

Researchers have identified an enzyme that can be inhibited to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

A team from the University of Copenhagen and Phillips Universitat Marburg in Germany have isolated a critical new host factor for the virus, which uses a small part of the host's own cells to copy itself and propagate the infection.

This host factor enzyme, PP2A-B56, is used by Ebola to produce proteins critical to its survival, suggesting that deactivating this enzyme could prevent the virus from being able to copy itself, stopping the infection before it gets going.

Experiments using cell cultures where PP2A-B56 was inhibited showed that Ebola infection rates were ten times lower after 24 hours than when the enzyme was left untouched. It is now hoped that this method can be developed into a workable new drug.

Professor Jakob Nilsson, from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Protein Research, said: "When we inhibit the PP2A-B56 enzyme, we remove the first link in a long process, which ends with Ebola spreading. And we can tell that it works."

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