PNNL’s Chief Science Officer Reflects on Using Advanced MS to Study Ebola in Sierra Leone

During the 2010s, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) had to combat an outbreak of Ebola, which was caused by infections with an orthoebolavirus (1). During 2014 to 2016, the Ebola outbreak, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), resulted in 28,600 infections and 11,325 deaths in the region (2). Found primarily in sub-Sharan Africa, Ebola virus disease is a severe, often fatal illness in humans, characterized by symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, and, in severe cases, internal and external bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated materials (2). Efforts to contain such outbreaks focus on surveillance, contact tracing, and supportive medical care, as no approved vaccine exists for the Sudan strain (3).

As part of a previous interview, I conducted with Tom Metz, laboratory fellow and chief science officer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) about the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) Conference, I asked him about the advanced mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation he has been able to work with during his career and how it was applied to real-world applications, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Below you can read the text transcript of Metz's remarks, as well as watch the full interview clip.

Spectroscopy: Can you talk about your team’s work using developing and applying high throughput metabolomics and lipidomics methods, in conjunction with proteomics, in studies of chronic and infectious diseases?

Tom Metz: You’ve probably heard the expression of standing on the shoulders of giants, and I have done that myself with my career here at PNNL. I came here in 2003 as a postdoc, and I joined the group of Dick Smith, who was a pioneer in the development of advanced mass spectrometry (MS) technology. I had only planned to stay here briefly as a postdoc, but then, when I got here, I saw the instrument development laboratories, and I saw all the great work that was going on. It was like being a kid in the candy store, and I felt like this was the place to be to not only learn all about advanced MS, but also to take what I saw as limitations and certain applications of that technology and begin to write grants and have projects to tackle the challenges and the limitations that I saw for performing certain measurements. So, we develop MS tools for measuring proteins and metabolites and lipids. In doing what might be called an omics approach, or a systems biology approach, we try and measure as many of those types of molecules as possible in a given sample type.

And then also, for about 10 years, we were part of a consortium under the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to study either pathogenic bacteria or pathogenic viruses. For example, influenza even had an opportunity to with collaborators study Ebola using these MS-based tools to measure as many molecules as we could that might explain. How does a person respond once they get infected with the virus? A lot of cell studies, cell model studies, animal model studies, but I would say the most interesting and challenging study was the last major Ebola outbreak, which I think was 2015. Our collaborators at the University of Wisconsin went to Sierra Leone, and they set up a field biosafety level (BSL) laboratory, and they collected samples from individuals that were infected with Ebola and prepared the samples there and activated the virus in the samples. We received them in an inactivated state, and we performed our measurements, and we were able to come up with a panel of markers that showed good predictive capacity to say if someone's infected with Ebola, this person's likely to succumb to the infection, and another person with a different profile of these markers would survive. So that was interesting just to have that opportunity. It was unfortunate that was in the context of an Ebola outbreak and people were passing away, but it was still interesting to have the opportunity to contribute to understanding the human response to that infection using the technologies that we developed.

You can listen to Metz's full remarks below.

References

1. CDC, Ebola Disease. CDC.gov. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/about/index.html (accessed 2025-04-01).
2. World Health Organization, Ebola West Africa, March 2014–2016. WHO.int. Available at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/ebola-outbreak-2014-2016-West-Africa (accessed 2025-04-01).
3. Muhumuza, R. A Child Dies of Ebola in Uganda, Raising Concern over Disease Surveillance in Outbreak. AP News. Available at: https://apnews.com/article/uganda-ebola-child-death-d32b71756797d2ed549e997af24f61fa (accessed 2025-04-01).
4. Shaw, I. Child, 4, Dies from ‘Eye-bleeding Disease’ Marking Setback in Efforts to Contain New Outbreak. The Scottish Sun. Available at: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/health/14428418/ebola-eye-bleeding-disease-child-dead-uganda-africa/ (accessed 2025-04-01).