How Ebola Kills; MED’s John Connor is Devising Diagnostics to Spot Ebola and Antivirals to Treat the Disease
Original article from: BU Today posted on August 5, 2014. by Art Jahnke
The Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia has now infected more than 1,600 people, according to the World Health Organization. To learn about how the virus kills and efforts being made at BU to devise diagnostics and therapies to treat it, BU Today spoke with John Connor, associate professor of microbiology at the School of Medicine and a researcher at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). Connor, who says the mortality rate of the current Ebola outbreak is above 50 percent, studies the tricks that viruses use to dominate their cellular hosts. He has been working collaboratively with researchers at BU and at other research institutions, with a particular focus on the Ebola virus.