Our top story, scientists have published a study about promising advances in fighting Ebola buyers. They're using the antibodies produced by survivor of the bot virus in an attempt to neutralize Ebola. It could help fight other emerging diseases. Great [ Name indiscernable ] is a professor at the so fire live at the skirt -- at the Institute at the time of the study. Welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. What are antibodies? Back antibodies are protein produced by our body in response to a foreign invading -- it is used to neutralize the infection and signal other cells in your body that are part of the immune system to target it the entities and destroy them. How do they fight the virus? Back there are two major functions. The first is the most prominent it is their ability to neutralize or prevent viruses from affecting new sales. We tend to go after those to develop therapeutics. The other functions tend to be speculated, were the molecules act like markers that are signaling the cells to focus their attention on whatever the antibodies have found and destroyed infected cells or destroy the bacteria. This patient who survived Ebola , his or her body just normally develop the antibodies because they were infected by Ebola Yes. The body responded to the infection and produced antibodies in response to that. It neutralized the viral attack on a person. If one body has the ability, why cannot everybody fight these off. The person we got this from, did receive Western medicine care. This is not eight goal survivor of the infection. Even with Western radical care, not everybody would be able to develop these antibodies to fight evil. It is a myth hit and miss thing? Correct. You'll see the variability that you see among anybody else and any other situation where certain people will have a better chance based off of unknown factors that are specific to that person. The antibodies in the blood of people who have survived various viruses have been used before. It has been done in us the -- emergency situations to see if that could help someone else and were out the devastating effects of the virus. How is this different? This is different because we are isolating the antibodies that proved to be the most potent antibodies in a pool of antibodies. You are describing a serum and they put that in the soup and into a person to hope that the collective group of antibodies in the CRM would neutralize and protect the person. These are the most potent antibodies? Yes. One we develop a therapeutic, we go through in our study, we isolated Breanna 21 antibodies. Up we took all of those and put them in a person, it might have an okay effect. What we're trying to do now, we are picking out the three antibodies that are the most potent of the group and develop a therapeutic and provide them in a higher concentration to hopefully step off infection. How will you go about doing this? My specialty was to develop the bait, if you will to pull the antibodies out of the sample that we got from the person. We developed proteins that gets targeted on the surface of the virus. We tagged it. We put it through a cell sorting machine, which would allow any cells in the sample that bind to the protein to be sorted out. They are called B cells. They contain the DNA sequences for the viral protein. We can pull the DNA out of each cell and rescue the antibodies and produce them ourselves in a laboratory. We can figure out which ones are the best versus sums that would not make good candidates. I'm speaking with Zachary. Is part of the research term at the time of the study which was pablum -- published last week. One of the things that is exciting about the research is not what you did, but the speed with which you did it. Can you tell us about that? It was interesting because it took us longer to get a blood sample, which was about 50 mL. It took four months to get the sample. We worked with her collaborators for about six weeks to characterize the era -- antibodies. We produced the library and six weeks compared to how long it took to get the sample. Speeding is up, it is a good possibility in the future, getting through the red tape and as it becomes more urgent with specific diseases, will have to find better ways to get samples out to people and hopefully stem this tide of these diseases. What stage of the process to develop a treatment for us with a virus is what you have done, you have identified and distilled the antibodies that have the most effect against the virus? You can interpret that in regards to a vaccine by identifying the antibodies and the areas that they target on the proteins of interest that we use to make the vaccines. We can help design where we try to produce a vaccine that will elicit similar antibodies that we found to be potent. That is a strategy that is emerging in the field. There is a vaccine that has been undergoing test trials in Africa? Back I believe so. This is a multi-proud effort? Yes. I am wondering how important it is to be able to extract and identify and copy these antibodies quickly. It can be very important. As we develop technologies, this was a first major run at it. We will try it to see -- to see if we can move faster. The thing all -- the theme the team identified was vulnerability in the structure of the Ebola virus. Our group and another group identified a new isotope at the protein. What is that? Is the stock. If you imagine the structure of the protein being like a Venus fly trap. You have a had to grab onto its target. You have the stop which anchors it into the ground or the surface of the body -- virus. It targets the stock at the base where it anchors the protein into the virus. It is previously undefined. It adds another weapon to our arsenal as far as selecting antibodies that hit different parts of the protein that neutralize the virus. Why is that spot vulnerable? It is a short region and is not appear to be dependent on the structure as much as we had previously thought. It is very much conserved between a lot of the other species which means antibodies targeting that area could be a special -- effective against a broader range of their -- range of viruses. Doesn't need take quickly? Can you come up with a treatment for a virus and then it will mutate. Do we have a feeling on the rapidity of that when it comes to Ebola? There is a lot of people have that have very strong points about that. My personal belief is that it does not mutate as fast as HIV are some of the other viruses. Mutants are possible, but as of yet, I do not believe we have seen any emerge. In addition to work on the vaccine, if I understand correctly, you are working on treatment. You mention the cocktail. That is a treatment or Ebola. Correct. What does this new information do to the treatment that you Artie have? What does that mean? We have new antibodies and they tend to be more potent than our previous batch. The last were from mice? Yes. And they were hewn and iced through standard protocols. They were very effective against this virus. Now that we have started developing and expanding the number of antibodies that we have to choose from, we are finding that there are some that are more ports and -- potent. We can bring the cost down and produce more. These will be important factors in generating the next generation. Speaking of the next generation, you are doing something with the research team, I don't think it is extraordinary but it is different. You're not going to patent the discoveries. You are going to make them available for any researcher who wants them around the globe. Why are you doing that? A lot of it is that it has not been done before the feel. There are not a lot of antibodies for researchers to compare. That is something that we decided to do. These are human and -- antibodies that were donated by subject 45. Without that was the best thing to do. As research moves forward in the field, they have a bar or something to compare what they find the top. Because of the expense of the research, the trend has been to take intellectual property rights when a discoveries may. Do you approve is that? Do you think that perhaps is an impediment to research? I do believe it is an impediment to research. Do not believe it is something that should be done from human antibodies. These were develop from a natural infection. I think antibodies developed from protocols and thinks the laboratories and Anna models, I think you can patent those. Those were proprietary done that is specific to what the lab was interested in. As far as I'm concerned, I think that when people are giving their blood to scientists to develop a therapeutic or to further science, they should be made available to everyone in the field and the world. Part of the announcement about this, it said that there might be implications for other viruses. What implications do you see in what you have been able to develop when it comes to the antibodies or Ebola . It opens the window for us to develop the techniques and abilities to form a group that can respond rapidly to emergence diseases. It seems like the government is looking for somewhere to throw money to stop something. This is one place where they could do that. We have shown how best we can know without direct funding and support from the government. In a situation like the guy -- zEKA. Where we put a? This is where they can do this. They could pass along and everybody has a individual role. My was to build a tool to make the antibodies Kyle the blood. We have other collaborators involved that took the antibodies and put them in the animal models. There are a lot of steps down the road to get a therapeutic from the blood sample to human use and there are other things we can do to speed that process up. It would be the same thing in this case, you would get a blood sample from someone who had had this virus? Back correct. Because it is not a fatal disease, how would you know that that particular blood sample was somebody who effectively bought off the virus? We doubt. You want to assume if they had it and it cleared infection, they would have some level of antibodies that would be useful. That is the top part. You get the samples, are they from -- are they from some of you have a powerful immunity spots? Were there other factors? Being able to do this again, this was from a single donor. Up we could get to compare multiple donors, world -- will we see were some he has a powerful immunity response versus somebody who validated by? You do not know. It is the same factors that contribute whether somebody lives or dies when they receive the same treatment. There are factors that we do not understand as far as that human -- the human response that will dictate whether we came poll from a certain person for a good therapeutic. That is why the research continues? Exactly. I have been speaking with Zachary. Is formally with the Scripps research Institute team and an associate director of antibody discovery thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Coming up, craft copy -- copy is catching on in San Diego.
A team of researchers, including scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, has identified human antibodies needed to develop drugs to fight the Ebola virus. The antibodies were extracted from the blood of a survivor of the 2014 outbreak. The findings were published in the journal Science.
This is the first time scientists have identified human antibodies to Ebola with which they can potentially develop more potent drugs to fight the virus, said Ebola expert Zachary Bornholdt, who was an assistant professor at The Scripps Research Institute at the time of the study.
Bornholdt is now associate director of antibody discovery at Mapp Biopharmaceutical. Previous drugs, including ZMapp, developed by the San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceuticals, were made using antibodies that were not fully human, according to Bornholdt.
The researchers on this study decided to donate the 321 antibodies they've identified to the public domain. Bornholdt said they did that to enable public health researchers around the world to have access to the antibodies thereby increasing the chances of developing successful immunotherapies to fight the virus.
“As far as I’m concerned, I think that when people are giving their blood to scientists to develop a therapeutic or to further science, then they should be made available to everyone in the field and in the world,” he told KPBS Midday Edition on Monday.
He said it took six weeks to characterize all of the antibodies and that he expects the process to become faster in the future.
“Speeding this up is entirely a good possibility in the future, getting through a lot of the red tape as it becomes more urgent, with specific diseases knocking at our door,” he said.
