Shots - Health Blog Cancer Drugs Thwart Ebola In Lab Ebola is
one virus you never want to catch. Ever. After some aches and a
fever, many infected people develop uncontrolled bleeding. The
mortality rates from Ebola infection can run as high as 90
percent. There's no cure for Ebola. But a group of scientists is
exploring whether some drugs already approved to treat cancer
might help tame the virus. Sounds wild. But there's a reason —
and now some evidence — to think it might work. To reproduce,
the Ebola virus needs the help of cells it invades. And a couple
of cancer drugs tweak a human protein that new copies of the
virus use to leave their host cells so they can infect others.
The tested drugs — Gleevec and Tasigna, both sold by Novartis —
are called tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Tyrosine kinases are
enzymes that put a phosphate group on a particular amino acid.
Amino acids, as you might remember from high school biology, are
the building blocks of proteins. When a phosphate group gets
attached to the right