Blood from Ebola survivors could help spur new disease treatments

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - After successfully treating four Ebola patients last year, Emory University in Atlanta is now leading a government-funded project that will use blood from survivors of the deadly virus to test a novel way of treating infectious disease. The new project will inject people with genetic material, such as DNA or RNA, in hopes of spurring a person’s own cells to make specific antibodies capable of fighting Ebola or other pathogens. "The person's body is the factory," said Dr. James Crowe of Vanderbilt University, one of the collaborators on the project. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's elite research arm, has awarded Emory up to $10.8 million over three years to direct the project.



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