A Fresh Look at Viruses: What Survivors Can Teach Us About Immunity
May 20, 2026 | LJI Live from the Lab Webinar
La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI)‘s latest Live from the Lab webinar, A Fresh Look at Viruses, featured graduate researchers Onyeka Chukwudozie and Kelly Schaefer and was moderated by LJI President and CEO Erica Ollmann Saphire, PhD, MBA.
The discussion explored how studying survivors of Lassa fever, Ebola, and related viral infections may help researchers uncover immune responses that could inform future vaccines and antibody-based therapies.
Opening the event, Saphire reflected on her own decades of research studying Ebola, Lassa virus, and other emerging viral threats. She described work that has taken her from high-containment laboratories to outbreak regions around the world and emphasized that preparedness begins long before a disease reaches international headlines.
New Insights Into Lassa Virus Immunity
Chukwudozie focused on Lassa fever, a rodent-borne viral hemorrhagic disease that is endemic throughout parts of West Africa.
Despite causing hundreds of thousands of infections each year and severe complications ranging from hearing loss to pregnancy-related mortality, there are currently no approved vaccines or antibody therapies for Lassa fever.
One challenge is that several distinct viral lineages circulate across West Africa, making it difficult to develop broadly effective interventions.
Working with collaborators in Nigeria, Chukwudozie analyzed blood samples from Lassa survivors and exposed individuals to better understand how the immune system responds to different forms of the virus. He reported that many survivors produced antibodies capable of recognizing multiple Lassa lineages, and a small number demonstrated broadly neutralizing responses against all tested lineages. The findings suggest that at least some people can develop immune responses that recognize diverse forms of the virus, providing important clues for future vaccine and therapeutic research.
One particularly striking example involved a 50-year-old survivor from southwestern Nigeria. Chukwudozie showed that her antibodies targeted multiple distinct regions of the virus’s surface glycoprotein, including the top, apex, side, base, and an additional region near the extreme base of the structure.
Rather than focusing on a single vulnerable site, her immune system generated antibodies against several different parts of the viral protein, illustrating the complexity and breadth of immune responses that can develop following infection.
Chukwudozie also described the extensive fieldwork behind the study, including traveling to outbreak regions, working directly with Nigerian hospitals and laboratories, and partnering with local scientists to collect and process samples. He emphasized that understanding diseases such as Lassa fever requires close collaboration with the communities most affected by them.
Searching for Broadly Protective Ebola Antibodies
Schaefer’s presentation focused on filoviruses, the family of viruses that includes Ebola and Marburg viruses.
While effective antibody therapies exist for some Ebola virus species, most current treatments are highly specific and do not work broadly across the entire filovirus family.
This creates challenges during outbreaks, particularly when laboratory confirmation is delayed or when multiple related viruses circulate in the same region.
To search for broader immune protection, Schaefer and her collaborators studied blood samples from individuals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who were likely exposed to multiple filoviruses over their lifetimes. The project required years of collaboration, fieldwork, and sample collection in remote regions where outbreaks have repeatedly occurred. Using specialized single-cell screening technology, the researchers examined millions of immune cells in search of rare antibodies with unusually broad activity.
Their search led to the discovery of a single antibody-producing cell that generated an antibody capable of recognizing all mammalian filoviruses tested in the study. The antibody also showed neutralizing activity and targeted a region of the viral glycoprotein that appears to be conserved across the filovirus family. Because only one cell among millions carried this antibody sequence, Schaefer noted just how rare the response appears to be.
Reflecting on the moment the signal first appeared on the screening instrument, she described it as “the most exciting day of my scientific career so far” and said it was “so incredibly fulfilling to finally see this.”
Additional laboratory testing will be needed to determine whether the antibody can eventually be developed into a therapeutic candidate. However, the discovery offers a potential path toward treatments that could work against multiple Ebola and Marburg viruses rather than a single species.
Both presentations highlighted a common theme: survivors’ immune systems may hold important clues for fighting future outbreaks. By studying the antibodies generated during natural infection, researchers hope to better understand what effective protection looks like and use those insights to guide the next generation of vaccines, therapies, and diagnostic tools. Saphire closed by emphasizing that progress depends on sustained investment in immunology research, surveillance, antibody discovery, and collaborations with scientists and healthcare teams in the regions where outbreaks occur.