Quantification of Ebola virus replication kinetics in vitro

TL;DR

This study combines experimental data and Bayesian inference to quantify Ebola virus replication kinetics in vitro, providing detailed parameters of the infection cycle crucial for future modeling and therapeutic development.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed in vitro kinetic parameters of Ebola virus infection using Bayesian methods, filling a gap in existing in vivo-focused models.

Findings

Estimated the eclipse phase duration in Ebola infection

Quantified the rate of infectivity loss of virions

Provided parameters for future co-infection models

Abstract

Mathematical modelling has successfully been used to provide quantitative descriptions of many viral infections, but for the Ebola virus, which requires biosafety level 4 facilities for experimentation, modelling can play a crucial role. Ebola modelling efforts have primarily focused on in vivo virus kinetics, e.g., in animal models, to aid the development of antivirals and vaccines. But, thus far, these studies have not yielded a detailed specification of the infection cycle, which could provide a foundational description of the virus kinetics and thus a deeper understanding of their clinical manifestation. Here, we obtain a diverse experimental data set of the Ebola infection in vitro, and then make use of Bayesian inference methods to fully identify parameters in a mathematical model of the infection. Our results provide insights into the distribution of time an infected cell spends in the eclipse phase (the period between infection and the start of virus production), as well as the rate at which infectious virions lose infectivity. We suggest how these results can be used in future models to describe co-infection with defective interfering particles, which are an emerging alternative therapeutic.