Nanoparticle vaccine strategy could protect against Ebola and other deadly filoviruses

Scripps Research scientists turn nanoparticles into virus “showcases” to help the immune system recognize deadly threats.

Scripps Research Institute

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An illustration of a self-assembling protein nanoparticle (SApNP) displaying Ebola virus surface proteins. This vaccine strategy is designed to help the immune system more effectively and respond to viral threats.

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Credit: Scripps Research

LA JOLLA, CA — Filoviruses get their name from the Latin word “filum,” meaning thread—a reference to their long, filamentous shape. This virus family contains some of the most dangerous pathogens known to science, including Ebola, Sudan, Bundibugyo and Marburg viruses. One reason these viruses remain so deadly is the instability of their surface proteins, which makes them difficult for our immune systems to detect and challenging for researchers to target with treatments or vaccines.

Now, a Nature Communications study (currently an Article-in-Press) from Scripps Research scientists published on December 12, 2025, describes new vaccine candidates designed to protect against multiple filovirus strains. These vaccines display filovirus surface proteins on engineered, self-assembling protein nanoparticles (SApNPs), helping the immune system better recognize and respond to the virus. In mouse studies, the nanoparticles triggered strong antibody responses across several filoviruses, highlighting a promising path toward broader, more effective protection for this dangerous family of viruses.

“Filoviruses demand better solutions—outbreaks have been devastating, with extremely high mortality rates,” says senior author Jiang Zhu, professor in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology. “For the last decade, I’ve been applying my physics background to master protein design. My goal is to develop a universal design blueprint for every major virus family, so that when a new outbreak occurs, we already have a strategy ready to deploy.”

Zhu’s next-generation vaccine efforts focus on viral surface glycoproteins—the proteins viruses use to enter cells and that the immune system must target for protection. His team uses an approach called rational, structure-based design, which involves studying these glycoproteins in extremely fine detail, engineering stable, well-shaped versions, and carrying them on virus-shaped protein balls—the SApNPs—that reliably trigger strong immune responses.

The team has already applied this vaccine platform to viruses such as HIV-1, hepatitis C, RSV, hMPV and influenza. Filoviruses were the next major challenge.

Filoviruses such as Ebola virus (EBOV) and Marburg virus (MARV) can cause viral hemorrhagic fever, with fatality rates reaching up to 90%. During the 2013–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, more than 11,000 people died and over 28,000 were infected. While two vaccines are approved for Ebola, no vaccine provides broad protection across the full filovirus family.

This is in part because of filovirus’ surface glycoproteins. These proteins are naturally unstable, and their vulnerable regions—epitopes—are hidden beneath a thick layer of glycans, forming a molecular “invisibility cloak.” In the pre-fusion state (before the virus enters a cell), this shield makes it difficult for immune cells to recognize the virus. Once the virus fuses with a cell, the glycoprotein refolds into a post-fusion shape, further complicating immune targeting.

In 2021, Zhu’s team addressed this problem in a study published in Nature Communications, where they mapped the Ebola glycoprotein structure in detail and developed a strategy to stabilize it. By removing the mucin-rich segments, they created a cleaner, more accessible version of the protein—one that was easier for the immune system to detect and capable of generating stronger, more useful antibody responses.

“After solving the Ebola problem in 2021, this new work takes that theory further and applies it across additional filovirus species,” Zhu explains.

In the new study, the researchers redesigned filovirus glycoproteins so they stay fixed in their pre-fusion form—the shape the immune system needs to recognize and bolster a response against. These redesigned proteins were then placed on Zhu’s SApNP platform, forming spherical, virus-like particles coated with many copies of the viral antigens. Biochemical and structural tests confirmed the particles assembled correctly and displayed the proteins as intended.

When tested in mice, these nanoparticle vaccines produced strong immune responses, including antibodies that could both recognize and neutralize several different filoviruses. Additional changes to the sugars on the protein surface further exposed conserved weak points, suggesting that this approach could eventually support a broader, possibly universal vaccine for this dangerous family of viruses.

Building on these results, Zhu’s team is extending this structure-guided, nanoparticle-based strategy to other high-risk pathogens, including Lassa virus and Nipah virus. They are also studying new methods to weaken or bypass the mucin shield, allowing the immune system even greater access to critical viral targets.

“Many factors affect how the immune system sees a virus and mounts a response,” Zhu adds. “Locking the antigen into its pre-fusion form gets you maybe 60% of the way there. But many viruses—including HIV and filoviruses—are covered by a dense glycan shield. If the immune system can’t see through that shield, even the best-designed vaccine won’t achieve full protection. Overcoming that ‘invisibility cloak’ is one of our next big goals.”

In addition to Zhu, authors of the study, “Rational design of next-generation filovirus vaccines combining glycoprotein stabilization and nanoparticle display with glycan modification,” include Yi-Zong Lee, Yi-Nan Zhang, Garrett Ward, Sarah Auclair, Connor DesRoberts, Andrew Ward, Robyn Stanfield, Linling He and Ian Wilson of Scripps Research; Maddy Newby, Joel Allen and Max Crispin of the University of Southampton; and Keegan Braz Gomes of Uvax Bio.

Support for the study was provided by Uvax Bio, LLC, and the National Institutes of Health. Uvax Bio, a spin-off vaccine company from Scripps Research, employs proprietary platform technology invented in Zhu’s lab to develop and commercialize prophylactic vaccines for various infectious diseases.

About Scripps Research

Scripps Research is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute ranked one of the most influential in the world for its impact on innovation by Nature Index. We are advancing human health through profound discoveries that address pressing medical concerns around the globe. Our drug discovery and development division, Calibr-Skaggs, works hand-in-hand with scientists across disciplines to bring new medicines to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, while teams at Scripps Research Translational Institute harness genomics, digital medicine and cutting-edge informatics to understand individual health and render more effective healthcare. Scripps Research also trains the next generation of leading scientists at our Skaggs Graduate School, consistently named among the top 10 US programs for chemistry and biological sciences. Learn more at www.scripps.edu.

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Journal

Nature Communications

Article Title

Rational design of next-generation filovirus vaccines combining glycoprotein stabilization and nanoparticle display with glycan modification

Article Publication Date

12-Dec-2025

 

Turning livestock waste into clean water: Animal manure biochar emerges as a low cost tool to remove toxic pollutants from wastewater

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Animal manure biochar for the removal of hazardous pollutants from wastewater

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Credit: Sangyoon Lee, Minyoung Kim, Gyeongnam Park, Sungyup Jung & Eilhann E. Kwon

Animal manure is not just a waste problem anymore. A new scientific review shows that when livestock manure is turned into biochar through controlled heating, it can become a powerful, low cost material for cleaning toxic pollutants from wastewater.

Turning waste into clean water

The livestock industry generates enormous volumes of manure every year, creating serious challenges for storage, odor control, greenhouse gas emissions, and the risk of contaminating soil and water with pathogens and nutrients. At the same time, many industrial and agricultural activities release stubborn contaminants including dyes, antibiotics, and heavy metals that current wastewater treatment plants struggle to remove. The new study reviews how converting animal manure into biochar can tackle both problems at once by transforming a difficult waste into a valuable tool for water purification.​

“Manure has long been viewed as a liability in intensive livestock systems, but our work shows it can be redesigned as part of the solution,” says corresponding author Eilhann E. Kwon of Hanyang University in Seoul. “By turning animal waste into functional biochar, we can help clean wastewater while reducing the environmental burden of manure management.”​

What is animal manure biochar?

Biochar is a carbon rich, porous material produced when biomass is heated in the absence of oxygen, a process known as pyrolysis. In the case of livestock operations, typical feedstocks include cattle, sheep, swine, chicken, rabbit, or goat manure, often mixed with bedding materials such as straw or grass. Because animal manure contains higher levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and other inorganic elements than many crop residues, the resulting biochar has distinctive surface chemistry and mineral content.​

These features give manure derived biochar a combination of high surface area, tunable pore structure, and abundant reactive functional groups that can bind pollutants. Mineral phases such as carbonates and phosphates, together with surface groups like carboxyl and hydroxyl, support mechanisms ranging from electrostatic attraction and hydrogen bonding to ion exchange, surface complexation, and even mineral precipitation.​

How it removes hazardous pollutants

The review shows that animal manure biochar can effectively capture both organic and inorganic contaminants that are difficult to treat using conventional biological processes. For toxic dyes used in textiles, paper, plastics, leather, and pharmaceutical industries, manure based biochars remove color and associated toxicity through a mix of pore filling, electrostatic interactions, hydrogen bonding, and so called electron donor–acceptor interactions between aromatic dye molecules and graphitic carbon domains. In several studies, sheep manure biochar achieved notably high adsorption capacities for common dyes such as methylene blue, methyl orange, and malachite green, outperforming biochars made from other animal manures.​

Antibiotics represent another major concern because they persist in water, foster antimicrobial resistance, and can disrupt ecosystems and human health even at low concentrations. The authors report that swine, bovine, and rabbit manure biochars can adsorb widely used drugs including tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, and levofloxacin, with performance controlled by pH, pore structure, and the abundance of oxygen containing surface groups. In many cases, adsorption is driven by a combination of hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen bonding, and electron donor–acceptor interactions between the antibiotic molecules and aromatic domains on the biochar surface.​

For heavy metals such as lead, copper, and cadmium, manure biochar offers additional advantages. The high ash content and naturally occurring carbonate and phosphate species promote the formation of insoluble metal precipitates inside the biochar matrix, while ion exchange and surface complexation at carboxyl and hydroxyl sites provide further binding. In comparative tests, animal manure biochars often matched or exceeded the adsorption capacity of commercial activated carbon or zeolite for certain metals, despite being produced from low cost wastes.​

Engineering biochar for real world use

A key message of the review is that the performance of manure derived biochar can be tuned through both pyrolysis conditions and post treatment. Slow pyrolysis at moderate to high temperatures typically increases ash content and promotes precipitation based removal of metals, whereas lower temperatures preserve more functional groups that support complexation and hydrogen bonding. Physical activation with steam, carbon dioxide, or hydrogen peroxide can open pores and introduce additional oxygen containing groups, while chemical activation with acids or alkalis further enhances surface functionality and adsorption capacity.​

Metal impregnation, especially with iron oxides, can make biochar magnetic for easier recovery and improve the removal of certain metals through additional precipitation and electrostatic binding. However, the authors note that high temperature processes and chemically intensive activation steps require careful evaluation of energy use, costs, and secondary waste generation before large scale deployment.​

From concept to application

The study concludes that animal manure biochar is a promising candidate for integration into advanced treatment stages at wastewater treatment plants and for on farm or decentralized water treatment systems. Because manure is continuously produced in large quantities and often costly to manage safely, converting it into engineered biochar could close loops between agriculture, energy, and water management.​

“Manure derived biochar offers a rare win–win opportunity,” Kwon says. “It helps control pollution from livestock production while providing an affordable material to clean contaminated water, but future work must focus on scaling up, regeneration strategies, and ensuring safe long term use.”​

By offering pollutant specific guidance on biochar production and modification, the authors aim to accelerate the adoption of manure based biochar in practical wastewater treatment and to inspire new research on coupling waste valorization with environmental protection.

 

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Journal reference: Lee S, Kim M, Park G, Jung S, Kwon EE. 2025. Animal manure biochar for the removal of hazardous pollutants from wastewater. Biochar X 1: e003  

https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/bchax-0025-0006  

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About the Journal: 

Biochar X is an open access, online-only journal aims to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries by providing a multidisciplinary platform for the exchange of cutting-edge research in both fundamental and applied aspects of biochar. The journal is dedicated to supporting the global biochar research community by offering an innovative, efficient, and professional outlet for sharing new findings and perspectives. Its core focus lies in the discovery of novel insights and the development of emerging applications in the rapidly growing field of biochar science. 

Follow us on Facebook, X, and Bluesky.  

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DOI

10.48130/bchax-0025-0006 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Animal manure biochar for the removal of hazardous pollutants from wastewater

 

A jolt to the system: Scripps Research biophysicists uncover new electrical transmission in cells

“Tiny biological batteries” can change the cell membrane’s electrical properties—a discovery that has big implications for health, as many essential cellular processes hinge upon precise electrical activity

Scripps Research Institute

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When droplet-like structures called condensates collide with cell membranes, the interaction can alter the cell membrane’s electrical properties at the point of contact.

This image shows a condensate colliding with a cell model called a Giant Unilamellar Vesicle (lower object) that has been stained so that its membrane changes color when its electrical charge changes.

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Credit: Scripps Research

LA JOLLA, CA—Many biological processes are regulated by electricity—from nerve impulses to heartbeats to the movement of molecules in and out of cells. A new study by Scripps Research scientists reveals a previously unknown potential regulator of this bioelectricity: droplet-like structures called condensates. Condensates are better known for their role in compartmentalizing the cell, but this study shows they can also act as tiny biological batteries that charge the cell membrane from within.

The team showed that when electrically charged condensates collide with cell membranes, they change the cell membrane’s voltage—which influences the amount of electrical charge flowing across the membrane—at the point of contact. The discovery, published in the journal Small on November 18, 2025, highlights a new fundamental feature about how our cells work, and could one day help scientists treat certain diseases.

“This represents an entirely new paradigm in bioelectricity that has substantial implications for electrical regulation in biology and health,” says Ashok Deniz, senior author of the new paper and professor at Scripps Research.

Condensates are organelles—structures within cells that carry out specific functions—but unlike more well-known organelles such as the nucleus and mitochondria, they are not enclosed within membranes. Instead, condensates are held together by a combination of molecular and electrical forces. They also occur outside of cells, such as at neuronal synapses. Condensates are involved in many essential biological processes, including compartmentalizing cells, protein assembly and signaling both within and between cells. Previous studies have also shown that condensates carry electrical charges on their surfaces, but little is known about how their electrical properties relate to cellular functions.

“You can think of condensates as electrically charged droplets in the cell, kind of like a tiny battery,” says first author Anthony Gurunian, a PhD candidate who is jointly advised by Deniz and Scripps Research associate professor and coauthor Keren Lasker. “Since condensates can often be charged, we wanted to test whether they can induce voltage changes across the cell membrane.”

If condensates can alter the electrical properties of cell membranes, it could have big implications, because many cellular processes are controlled by changes in the cell membrane voltage. For example, ion channels—proteins that rapidly transport molecules across the cell membrane—are activated by changes in cell membrane voltage. In the nervous system, this rapid, one-directional transport of electrically charged molecules is what drives the propagation of electrical signals between nerves.

To test whether condensates can alter cell membrane voltage, the researchers used cell models called Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs). To allow them to visualize changes in voltage, they stained GUV membranes with a dye that changes color in response to changes in electrical charge. Then, they put GUVs in the same vessel as lab-made condensates and photographed their interactions under the microscope.

They showed that when the condensates and GUVs collided, it caused a local change in the GUV membranes’ electrical charge at their point of contact. “That’s one of the interesting things and novel things about this, because cell membrane voltage has been traditionally considered in terms of a larger scale property,” says Deniz. “Local changes in membrane potential could have important biological implications, for example for the function of ion channels and other membrane proteins that are regulated by voltage.”

By varying the chemical make-up of the condensates, the researchers showed that the more electrical charge a condensate carried, the bigger its impact on cell membrane voltage. They also found that the shape of the condensates appeared to be correlated with variations in the voltage change.

“In some instances, the voltages induced are quite substantial in magnitude—on the same scale as voltage changes in nerve impulses,” says Gurunian.

More tests are needed to understand the precise mechanisms by which condensates cause these electrical changes, the researchers say, and to investigate the phenomenon’s impact on cellular function.

“Now that we know that condensates can locally induce these voltages, the next step is to test whether this novel physics is functionally important for cells and organisms,” says Deniz. “If we see functional consequences, it will not only tell us something new about cell biology, but it might also help scientists engineer therapeutics in the future.”

The study, ‘Biomolecular Condensates Can Induce Local Membrane Potentials’, was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant R35 GM130375), the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation (Moore Inventor Fellowship number 579361), the Professor Ian A. Wilson Endowed Fellowship for structural biology in the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences, and an ARCS Foundation San Diego Chapter Scholarship.

About Scripps Research

Scripps Research is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute ranked one of the most influential in the world for its impact on innovation by Nature Index. We are advancing human health through profound discoveries that address pressing medical concerns around the globe. Our drug discovery and development division, Calibr-Skaggs, works hand-in-hand with scientists across disciplines to bring new medicines to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, while teams at Scripps Research Translational Institute harness genomics, digital medicine and cutting-edge informatics to understand individual health and render more effective healthcare. Scripps Research also trains the next generation of leading scientists at our Skaggs Graduate School, consistently named among the top 10 US programs for chemistry and biological sciences. Learn more at www.scripps.edu.

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Journal

Small

Article Title

Biomolecular Condensates Can Induce Local Membrane Potentials