Grant: Operating Grant - Innovative Ebola Research Grants

With case fatality rates of up to 90%, Ebola virus is an emerging pathogen with devastating consequences to the global community. At present, no vaccines or treatments have been approved, and many of the clinical parameters of the infection have not been characterized. As a result, clinicians managing the outbreak in West Africa and in Europe or North America have no evidence-based guidelines for successfully treating Ebola virus disease (EVD). Furthermore, there is an absence of healthcare providers who are trained to provide care for this type of highly infectious virus, a major gap in the Canadian healthcare system that urgently needs to be addressed. EVD has severe effects on multiple systems in the body, and therefore suspected cases should be treated in an intensive care unit (ICU). An ICU allows for life-saving supportive care to be delivered, while monitoring the affects of these interventions with state-of-the art diagnostic equipment. We intend to look at key clinical features of EVD in a nonhuman primate model (the best model of disease), and its effects on body systems using the same diagnostic and supportive equipment that are used in a hospital ICU within our Containment Level 4 (CL4) facility. We suspect that these interventions will keep the animal alive longer and increase the limited timeframe currently available for treatments that target the virus. One such treatment, an antibody cocktail (ZMapp), developed by our group, has been used in emergency situations for various healthcare providers infected with ebola. We intend to use ZMapp in combination with the ICU supportive care, to extend the life of the animal and ultimately cure the infection. Moreover, during these studies, multidisciplinary teams of healthcare providers (physicians, nurses, etc.), will be at the bedside facilitating treatment in the CL4, leading to the development of clinical teams capable of responding to suspected cases in Canada, or during future outbreaks abroad.