Research Center New Iberia
Tomorrow, chimpanzees take part in a vaccine experience that for the first time, goals to help chimpanzees. Researchers from New Iberia Research Center, a branch of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, anticipate planting six chimpanzees with a vaccine against Ebola, which is decimating populations of wild apes. The experience will not test whether the vaccine works, which would require the injection of animals with a "challenge" dose of the deadly Ebola virus. On the contrary, simply to assess the vaccine's safety and ability to generate an immune response.
primatologist Peter Walsh, the driving force of experience, wants ultimately to vaccinate chimpanzees and gorillas wild against Ebola, and he hoped that this test will help clear the few remaining obstacles . "The goal is to show the conservation community that the vaccine will not kill chimpanzees or gorillas," says Walsh, an ecologist who worked until recently at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig, Germany. a study by Walsh and published in the issue of December 8, 06 Science documented that about Ebola virus has killed 5,000 gorillas in the region of his group studied in Gabon and the Republic of Congo. "Ebola has killed a third of the gorillas in the world," said Walsh.
Walsh pushed for the vaccination of wild monkeys for several years and he said he met some stiff resistance. "Vaccination is frightening both in international conservation circles and many people in Africa," said Walsh. But Max Planck primatologist and a great defender of the environment monkey Christophe Boesch, who worked with Walsh in the past, supports its efforts. "Vaccination of wild monkeys is certainly a new and somewhat controversial concept," Boesch said. "However, the wilderness is increasingly rare in Africa, and if we want to survive monkeys in Ebola-infected areas, vaccination is one of the few realistic solutions. Peter has the stamina to complete the project very hard at the end, and I I'm glad to see concrete steps from soon. "
the chimpanzees vaccine will present little risk. Developed by Integrated BioTherapeutics Inc. in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which hopes to develop a product to protect humans against biowarfare, the vaccine contains proteins the Ebola virus in what is known as a viruslike particle that can not copy or cause disease. In a monkey experiment published in the November 15, 07 Journal of Infectious Diseases , the investigators of the company and the US Army have shown that the vaccine completely protected monkeys against five a challenge dose lethal Ebola virus. But monkeys are not apes and chimpanzees in captivity were the next logical step in the testing process, particularly given the will to Walsh to lead the vaccination of their relatives in the wild.
New Iberia plans to vaccinate chimpanzees tomorrow and 28 days later. Researchers will collect samples of animal blood, requiring anesthetize. "There is minimal risk there," acknowledges Thomas Rowell, director at New Iberia. But he stressed that the potential benefit to chimpanzees and other apes outweighs the risks. The tests will also look for Ebola antibodies triggered by the vaccine in chimpanzee feces, which reflect what Walsh hope to do in the wild.
Walsh, who consulted many experts on how best to immunize wild monkeys, for security reasons does not want to anesthetize wild monkeys. Instead, he plans to use the darts that contain the vaccine; Similar darting was used to treat wild gorillas with antibiotics. Collecting subsequent fecal samples should allow Walsh and his team hunt for vaccine and antibody to pull DNA to identify individuals.
Experience New Iberia takes place in a context of growing opposition to the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. Researchers for decades have turned to our closest relatives to test vaccines against a broad range of diseases, including polio, hepatitis B and C, respiratory syncytial virus, and AIDS. But this "animal model" largely lost favor, mainly because the ethical landscape has changed and costs have increased. Several countries have banned all invasive experiments in biomedical research with this species as endangered, and the United States and Gabon are the only two that are home to captive chimpanzees for research and leave.
The debate on chimpanzees in research went to a full boil in the US last year. First, Congress began reviewing a bill, the Law on the Protection of the Great Ape, which altogether prohibit this type of biomedical research. Supporters of the bill, including the Humane Society of the United States and primatologist Jane Goodall-team with then-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and has launched a major campaign power over the fate of a colony of 186 chimpanzees " research "living in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and are owned by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Scientists have not conducted studies with these chimpanzees for several years, and when the NIH announced that he intended to move in a facility in Texas that can again be used in research, an uproar broke out. At the request of three US senators, the National Academy of Sciences has decided in December to analyze current and future needs for chimpanzees in biomedical research, and NIH has plans for Alamogordo chimpanzees pending. Rowell New Iberia said the analysis will likely examine the impact of such a ban could have on the health of chimpanzees by slowing product development as a vaccine against Ebola that could help both humans and monkeys .
Hopefully, Walsh expects to begin testing the vaccine against Ebola in Gabon later this year.
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