Abstract
The 2014 Ebola outbreak, the largest recorded, took us largely unprepared, with no available vaccine or specific treatment. In this context, the World Health Organization declared that the humanitarian use of experimental therapies against Ebola Virus (EBOV) is ethical. In particular, an experimental treatment consisting of a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) produced in tobacco plants and specifically directed to the EBOV glycoprotein (GP) was tested in humans, apparently with good results. Several mAbs with high affinity to the GP have been described. This review discusses our current knowledge on this topic. Particular emphasis is devoted to those mAbs that have been assayed in animal models or humans as possible therapies against Ebola. Engineering aspects and challenges for the production of anti-Ebola mAbs are also briefly discussed; current platforms for the design and production of full-length mAbs are cumbersome and costly.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no declarations of interest. MMA gratefully acknowledge the institutional funding received from Tecnológico de Monterrey (seed funding to Strategic Research Groups, 2014) and funding provided by CONACyT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, México) in the form of a sabbatical scholarship (262130) and student scholarships for ARMI and EGG. GTdS gratefully acknowledge the funding received by CONACyT (scholarship 234713) and Fundación México in Harvard in the form of postdoctoral scholarships. AK and NA acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (EFRI-1240443), IMMODGEL (602694), and the National Institutes of Health (EB012597, AR057837, DE021468, HL099073, AI105024, AR063745).