Ebola fighters Time magazine named the "Ebola fighters" as their 2014 'Person of Year' Dec. 10, highlighting among others Dr. Thomas Geisbert, a virologist formerly with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases who conducted some of the first trials of the drug TKM-Ebola.
In an interview for the magazine, Geisbert talked about his experiences during the 1990s and early 2000s at USAMRIID, which is a biosafety level 4 lab located on Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. At the time, as they studied Ebola virus and potential vaccine candidates, others were not as interested. Geisbert described how excited he was that USAMRIID's scientific contributions led to drugs that supported the current outbreak response.
"In this Ebola outbreak, we know at least four to five people got the TKM drug, and all have survived. But we don't want to say the drug was the reason they survived. While we hope they helped in patients, we can't say for sure because the patients got so many other things. There are so many confounding variables, so how can you say any one thing made the difference? But it's a great feeling knowing I was involved in the development of something that hopefully saved somebody. And if it saved one person, it matters," said Geisbert, in his Time magazine interview.
Although Geisbert has since moved on to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, other researchers at USAMRIID have continued the fight against Ebola. In fact, the efforts to develop diagnostic capabilities, in addition to prevention and treatment countermeasures have increased dramatically for USAMRIID and the other units within the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.