Abstract
Filoviruses, especially Ebola virus, cause sporadic outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fever with very high case fatality rates in Africa. The 2013–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa provided large survivor cohorts spurring a large number of human studies which showed that specific neutralising antibodies played a key role in protection following a natural Ebola virus infection, as part of the overall humoral response and in conjunction with the cellular adaptive response. This review will discuss the studies in survivors and animal models which described protective neutralising antibody response. Their mechanisms of action will be detailed. Furthermore, the importance of neutralising antibodies in antibody-based therapeutics and in vaccine-induced responses will be explained, as well as the strategies to avoid immune escape from neutralising antibodies. Understanding the neutralising antibody response in the context of filoviruses is crucial to furthering our understanding of virus structure and function, in addition to improving current vaccines & antibody-based therapeutics.
Highlights
Filoviridae PhylogenyThe first filovirus genus to be identified was Marburgvirus in 1967 composed of one species Marburg marburgvirus with two viruses: Marburg virus (MARV) and the very closely related Ravn virus (RAVV)
Nuffield Department of Medicine, Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
All animals which survived to challenge showed moderate to high levels of Marburg virus (MARV)-specific IgG in sera, whereas animals that died did not have any detectable IgG responses [132]. The sum of these results suggests the importance of humoral response following rVSV-MARV vaccination even though the neutralising activity may be less important with rVSV-MARV vaccine compared to rVSV-Ebola virus (EBOV) vaccine
Summary
The first filovirus genus to be identified was Marburgvirus in 1967 composed of one species Marburg marburgvirus with two viruses: Marburg virus (MARV) and the very closely related Ravn virus (RAVV). The first four of these six viruses are known to cause Ebola virus disease (EVD) in humans, with a CFR frequently reported between 40% and 90%. This is likely an overestimate as many EBOV infections may go unreported [2]. BOMV, nor MLAV are known to cause viral haemorrhagic fever date, neither BOMV, LLOV nor MLAV are known to cause viral haemorrhagic fever with with its pathogenicity in humans to be determined [8,9]. EBOV due to the ongoing impact of this pathogen on world health and the recent on EBOV due to the ongoing impact of this pathogen on world health and the developments in antibody-based therapeutics and EBOV vaccines
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