Antiviral therapies against Ebola and other emerging viral diseases using existing medicines that block virus entry.
Author(s)
Long, J
Wright, E
Molesti, E
Temperton, N
Barclay, W
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Emerging viral diseases pose a threat to the global population as intervention strategies are mainly limited to basic containment due to the lack of efficacious and approved vaccines and antiviral drugs. The former was the only available intervention when the current unprecedented Ebolavirus (EBOV) outbreak in West Africa began. Prior to this, the development of EBOV vaccines and anti-viral therapies required time and resources that were not available. Therefore, focus has turned to re-purposing of existing, licenced medicines that may limit the morbidity and mortality rates of EBOV and could be used immediately. Here we test three such medicines and measure their ability to inhibit pseudotype viruses (PVs) of two EBOV species, Marburg virus (MARV) and avian influenza H5 (FLU-H5). We confirm the ability of chloroquine (CQ) to inhibit viral entry in a pH specific manner. The commonly used proton pump inhibitors, Omeprazole and Esomeprazole were also able to inhibit entry of all PVs tested but at higher drug concentrations than may be achieved in vivo. We propose CQ as a priority candidate to consider for treatment of EBOV.
Date Issued
2015-02-10
Date Acceptance
2015-02-10
Citation
F1000 Research, 2015, 4, pp.30-30
ISSN
2046-1402
Publisher
F1000Research
Start Page
30
End Page
30
Journal / Book Title
F1000 Research
Volume
4
Copyright Statement
© 2015 Long J et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).
License URL
Subjects
H5N1
Marburg
avian influenze
chloroquine
ebola
emerging viral disease
esomeprazole
omemprazole
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
30