New Hope for Ebola?

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How the largest outbreak on record jump-started the development of two experimental vaccines and a couple of promising treatments


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Researchers often talk about a race between the Ebola virus and the people it infects. A patient wins the race only if the immune system manages to defeat the virus before it destroys most of his or her organs. A community wins the race if it can isolate the first few patients before the disease spreads. Humanity will win the race if it develops treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine before the virus gains a permanent toehold in the cities of the globe.


For years Ebola held a natural advantage. Outbreaks were too small (typically fewer than 100 people) and too short-lived (less than five months) to give researchers the chance to test potential therapies. By the time they could have put a clinical trial in place, the threat would have passed. Pharmaceutical companies and research groups found it difficult to justify spending money on a disease that, as horrible as it was, had taken 40 years to dispatch its first 1,600 victims. Other diseases seemed far more worrisome: malaria, tuberculosis and HIV killed more than three million people in 2013.


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