Ebolavirus is a member of the family Filoviridae, the cause of Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), which has a case fatality rate that ranges from 30-90%. Given the high case fatality rate, high potential for spread with increasing globalization and global warming and the significant biosecurity threat, Ebolavirus has become a high priority target for development of antivirals and prophylactic vaccines. With limited successes in animal models, challenges imposed by Ebolavirus infection mechanisms have hampered development of effective and safe therapies and vaccines for humans. To facilitate development of effective vaccines and therapeutics an understanding of the profile of humoral and cellular immune responses in humans to Ebolavirus infection is key, especially with respect to memory immunity and its persistence over time. Thus far, this knowledge is lacking.
We have studied the profile of the humoral and cellular immune responses in cohorts of human survivors of Filovirus infection and explored specific memory immunity and its persistence over time. This has been accomplished by profiling the sera and lymphocytes of Ebolavirus survivors with individual proteins of Ebolavirus, to identify the targets and specific epitopes of the humoral and cellular immune responses in human survivors. The humoral and cellular immune responses to these targets have been studied over many years, which has provided insight into the nature of memory immunity tin Filovirus survivors. This unique data may be useful as a metric for development of successful vaccines and therapeutics.
