There are no approved treatments or preventatives against Ebola virus disease, but investigators have now designed peptides that mimic the virus' N-trimer, a highly conserved region of a protein that's used to gain entry inside cells.
The team showed that the peptides can be used as targets to help researchers develop drugs that might block Ebola virus from entering into cells.
"In contrast to the most promising current approaches for Ebola treatment or prevention, which are species-specific, our 'universal' target will enable the selection of broad-spectrum inhibitors that should block all known--and likely future--Ebola strains," said Dr. Michael Kay, senior author of the Protein Science study.
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Journal
Protein Science