Drug development for controlling Ebola epidemic – A race against time

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The Ebola outbreak in West Africa this year is causing global panic. The high mortality of this disease is largely due to lack of effective preventive vaccines or therapeutic drugs. Realizing the gravity and urgency in controlling the epidemic, governments and drug companies across the world have taken many strong measures to speed up the process of drug development. Several representative candidate drugs that demonstrate potent anti-Ebola activity in preclinical studies have been pushed forward to higher research stages to obtain an earlier official license. It is expected that proven preventive or therapeutic regimens could be established in the near future.