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Even if Ebola has faded from the headlines, the danger remains. As the largest and most deadly outbreak of Ebola winds down, scientists and public health officials are looking closely at what it will take to finish the job and to prepare better for the next big crisis. The apparent success of a nimble and creative clinical trial for a vaccine is a positive and instructive outcome. But many of the most important lessons come from failures in preparedness.
Here you can follow Nature’s full coverage of the crisis, including the travails of reporter Erika Check Hayden who travelled to Sierra Leone in December 2014, along with recent research and archival coverage of Ebola’s past.
The success of an Ebola vaccine trial shows that clinical trials can be done under the difficult field conditions of an epidemic — if there is enough political and regulatory will.
Leaders and health agencies are talking about 'lessons learned' from West Africa's Ebola epidemic. But a major push is needed to end the outbreak, urges Joanne Liu.
Scaling up the recruitment of individuals who have recovered from infection deserves urgent consideration, argue Joshua M. Epstein, Lauren M. Sauer and colleagues.
Christopher J. M. Whitty and colleagues explain why the United Kingdom is funding many small community centres to isolate suspected cases in Sierra Leone.
Drawing on his experiences in previous outbreaks, David L. Heymann calls for rapid diagnosis, patient isolation, community engagement and clinical trials.
Bottlenecks in testing samples for Ebola leave patients stranded for days in isolation wards and raise fears of seeking treatment, says J. Daniel Kelly.
Nature examines the risks and benefits of unproven Ebola treatments, as World Health Organization says it is ethical to use them in West African crisis.
The genome sequences of 175 Ebola virus from five districts in Sierra Leone, collected during September–November 2014, show that the rate of virus evolution seems to be similar to that observed during previous outbreaks and that the genetic diversity of the virus has increased substantially, with the emergence of several novel lineages.
Yi-Gang Tong
Wei-Feng Shi
The China Mobile Laboratory Testing Team in Sierra Leone
An analysis of 85 Ebola virus sequences collected in Guinea from July to November 2014 provides insight into the evolution of the Ebola virus responsible for the epidemic in West Africa; the results show sustained transmission of three co-circulating lineages, each defined by multiple mutations.
Analysis of 179 new Ebola virus sequences from patient samples collected in Guinea between March 2014 and January 2015 shows how different lineages evolved and spread in West Africa.
A new treatment, containing an optimized cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies against Ebola virus, provided full protection and disease reversal in rhesus monkeys when given under conditions in which controls succumbed by day 8; this new therapy may be a good candidate for treating Ebola virus infection in human patients.
A broad-spectrum antiviral small molecule is reported to act as an inhibitor of viral polymerase activity and is shown to be effective in protecting non-human primates from lethal filovirus infection when administered after exposure.
The search for therapeutics to treat infections by ebolaviruses and Marburg virus has focused on identifying compounds that interfere with viral entry into host cells. Here, White and Schornberg discuss recent studies that have identified Niemann–Pick C1 (NPC1), a protein that resides deep in the endocytic pathway, as an important host factor in this process.