For the first time, a vaccine has worked against the deadly Ebola virus,
which kills people within days through haemorrhaging. Gary Nabel of the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor tested the vaccine on guinea pigs (Nature
Medicine, vol 4, p 37). He injected the animals’ muscles with harmless loops of
DNA, called plasmids, containing genes from the Ebola virus. The animals made
antibodies and white blood cells, which protected them when they were injected
with the virus.
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