title: Against the clock towards new Ebola virus therapies.
abstract: Since the end of 2013, West Africa has been suffering the largest Ebola virus (EBOV) outbreak in recorded history. The lack of health care infrastructure in the affected countries, as well as a concentration of infected cases in the most populated areas allowed the virus to spread with no control during the first months of the outbreak. With no specific treatment available to combat EBOV infection and its associated disease, an extraordinary worldwide effort was made to confront the severity of the situation and to establish new therapeutic strategies that would lead to better and faster control and eradicate the outbreak. In the last two years, several candidate therapies and potential vaccines against EBOV have arisen and human clinical trials are ongoing, in hopes of starting their deployment in the affected countries. This article reviews the current candidate therapies against EBOV, their stage of development and future prospects in battling EBOV outbreaks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA; Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA. Electronic address: carles.martinez@mssm.edu.
authors.forename: Carles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martínez-Romero
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA; Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA; Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA. Electronic address: adolfo.garcia-sastre@mssm.edu.
authors.forename: Adolfo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: García-Sastre
mesh_terms: D000354:Africa, Western / Q000453:epidemiology; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious / Q000517:prevention & control*; D055808:Drug Discovery; D058492:Drug Repositioning; D046129:Ebola Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000635:transmission; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents; D046129:Ebola Vaccines
keywords: Antivirals; Drug repurposing; Ebolavirus; Outbreak; Therapies; Virus-like particle