Australian researchers working with ferrets to understand the deadly Ebola virus at the CSIRO in Geelong said a vaccine would not come fast enough to stop the current outbreak.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 650 people have been killed in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since an outbreak began in February.
The doctor leading Sierra Leone’s fight against Ebola died on Tuesday afternoon (local time) from the virus.
There is no cure for the disease, which causes vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding.
Glenn Marsh from the CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) said any vaccine or therapy was a long way off.
“It’s unlikely that any vaccine that’s developed now would come quickly enough for this current outbreak,” Mr Marsh said.
He said they were at the start of the process, working with ferrets to understand how the Zaire Ebola virus made people sick, while another strain did not.
“So, Reston Ebola virus, even though it infects humans, it doesn’t cause any disease at all,” Mr Marsh said.
“These viruses are very closely related, and there’s no real good evidence to say why one causes the disease and one doesn’t, so by comparing these in animal models, we hope we can get a little bit more information about the differences between them.”
Researchers have also been working with ferrets to understand the Hendra and Nipah viruses.
“The ferret is a very good model for human disease,” Mr Marsh said.
“If we infect the ferret with Hendra we get a very similar disease to what’s seen in humans, and the hope is if we put Ebola virus into a ferret, we’ll also see a disease similar to what’s seen in a human.”
Lab one of the ‘highest-contaminated’ in the world
The disease infects people through contact, usually with bodily fluids that contain the virus, before spreading to other parts of the body.
But Mr Marsh told the ABC it was not very well understood.
“We’ve all seen the Hollywood depiction of the Ebola virus where people bleed to death,” he said.
“In actual cases it’s not quite that dramatic. There’s actually very little blood loss in many people, it’s the shutdown of vital organs such as the kidney and liver that leads to death.”
The research is taking place in a sealed-off section of the AAHL, where nothing gets in or out.
Anyone who enters is required to shower first and wear clothes that are provided on-site.
Mr Marsh said it was the perfect place for researching such a dangerous virus.
“This laboratory in Geelong is one of the highest-containment laboratories in the world,” he said.
“The virus is being maintained in laboratories deep inside the facility, keeping them very safe from the outside environment.”