The FDA-Approved Oral Drug Nitazoxanide Amplifies Host Antiviral Responses and Inhibits Ebola Virus

Jasenosky, Luke D.; Cadena, Cristhian; Mire, Chad E.; Borisevich, Viktoriya; Haridas, Viraga; Ranjbar, Shahin; Nambu, Aya; Bavari, Sina; Soloveva, Veronica; Sadukhan, Supriya; Cassell, Gail H.; Geisbert, Thomas W.; Hur, Sun; Goldfeld, Anne E.

To assess the ability of NTZ treatment to inhibit replication of authentic EBOV in A549 cells, we infected cells in duplicate with the Zaire ebolavirus Kikwit strain (EBOV). After 1 hour in DMEM+1%FBS cells were treated with 20 µM or 40 µM NTZ for 4 hours before EBOV infection. After the 4-hour pre-treatment, the supernatants from the NTZ-treated cells were removed and then used to make up the EBOV inocula per condition. Cells were inoculated at an MOI of 0.01, which was rocked at 37°C for one hour. The inocula were left on the cells and had fresh media containing 20 µM or 40 µM NTZ added. Supernatants were collected at 1, 48, and 72 hours post infection and analyzed for production of infectious virus by plaque assay analysis.