Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/998534
18 T M C » P U L S E | J U LY 2 0 1 8 A fter three decades of work- ing with the deadly Ebola virus, Thomas Geisbert, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB Health) is finally reaping the life-saving fruits of his professional labor. In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) began distrib- uting more than 7,500 doses of the experimental rVSV-ZEBOV— the Ebola vaccine Geisbert helped create—to contain an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has infected more than 60 people and killed at least 28. WHO officials say the inocula- tions represent a "paradigm shift" in the way countries respond to the deadly virus, whose symptoms include a high fever and internal bleeding, because this is the first time a vaccine has been used to fight Ebola at its onset. "It's clear that this is what we have all wished for for quite some time," said Joseph McCormick, M.D., a former official with the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention who is now an epidemi- ology professor and regional dean at UTHealth School of Public Health in Brownsville. "In terms of Ebola control, this is a big deal." For Geisbert, it's the culmina- tion of decades of Ebola research dating back to the 1980s when he started his career working at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Since Ebola was discovered in 1976—and until the major out- break in western Africa in 2014 that killed thousands—the virus gener- ally emerged every few years and killed dozens to hundreds of people in small African villages with each outbreak. At the start of his career, the military wasn't concerned about widespread Ebola illness, Geisbert said. There was greater worry that the then-Soviet Union would try to use Ebola and its cousin, the Marburg virus, as biological weap- ons. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror- ist attacks and the deadly mailed anthrax letters that same year, officials worried about potential terrorism involving Ebola. (continued) UNLEASHING THE EBOLA VACCINE Fighting a virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo B y R y a n H o l e y w e l l Facing page: Thomas Geisbert, Ph.D., works inside the Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) laboratory at UTMB's Galveston National Laboratory. The lab is designed to contain the world's most deadly, easily transmittable diseases. What we do in the BSL4 [Biosafety Level 4] is dangerous. My wife runs my lab. The people in the lab are some of my closest friends. You're used to putting people you care about in harm's way. — THOMAS GEISBERT, PH.D. Professor of microbiology and immunology at UTMB Health