Perseverance pays off in fight against deadly Lassa virus

Before Ebola virus ever struck West Africa, locals were already on the lookout for a deadly pathogen: Lassa virus. With thousands dying from Lassa every year—and the potential for the virus to cause even larger outbreaks—researchers are committed to designing a vaccine to stop it. Now a team led by Staff Scientist Kathryn Hastie and Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has solved the structure of the viral machinery that Lassa virus uses to enter human cells. Their study, published June 2, 2017 in the journal Science, is the first to show a key piece of the viral structure, called the surface glycoprotein, for any member of the deadly arenavirus family. Importantly, the new structure provides a blueprint to design a Lassa virus vaccine. “This was a tenacious effort—over a decade—to conquer a global threat,” said Ollmann Saphire, senior author of the new study. Arenavirus structure had never been seen...