[The use of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of Ebola virus disease.]

Some drugs candidates for treatment of Ebola virus disease (EVD), have been studied, monoclonal antibody (mAb) cocktails have shown great potential as EVD therapeutics. The advantages of mAb therapy include low toxicity, high specifcity and versatility, with the range of biological effects being dependent upon the Fc region. Functions of mAbs include pathogen opsonisation, complement activation, antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity and virus neutralization characteristics. The most known mAb cocktail, used as therapeutic, is ZMapр, manufactured by «Leaf Biopharmaceutical¼ from 2004. The elaborated mAb cocktails, structures and properties s of mAbs, the protective characteristics of mAbs and development of new pan-ebolavirus mAbs are reviewed in this article.

[Transcriptional analysis of the Grp gene, a genomic homolog of the retrotransposon gypsy gag gene, in Drosophila melanogaster].

In the present work, we studied the Grp gene (CG4680, Gag related protein) expression at the transcriptional level. It was found that at the embryonic and larval stages of D. melanogaster development the Grp expression proceeds at a low level, but it significantly increases at the adult stage. Adult individuals display a tissue-specific expression: an eleveated level of transcription is observed in the gut tissues, but not in the chitin carcass, head, and gonads. Since the gut may potentially be a primary barrier for the penetration of a viral infection, we conducted a comparative analysis of Grp gene transcription in D. melanogaster strains differing in the presence of active copies of the gypsy errantivirus and in the status of the flamenco gene controlling sensitivity to errantiviral infections. No noticeable differences in the level of Grp gene transcription were revealed. Thus, the Grp gene is not a pseudogene, but it is a functional gene of the D. melanogaster genome whose role remains to be elucidated.