News > Expanding Pathoplexus: Marburg virus added
By the Pathoplexus Team - 28 November 2025
Today, Pathoplexus launches an additional viral pathogen: Marburgvirus, a member of the Filoviridae family, which includes Ebola viruses. Marbugvirus contains both Marburg virus (MARV), and its close relative Ravn virus (RAVN). MARV in turn can be divided into two main clades: Marburg A and Marburg B. MARV causes Marburg virus disease with a case fatality rate of 24% to 88%. The NIH ranks MARV as a Category A Priority Pathogen. Pathoplexus aims to support sequence sharing to improve both understanding and response.
Our Executive Board decided to prioritize adding Marburg in light of the recent outbreak in Ethiopia, and due to prior expressions of interest from the community.
Jean Pierre Musabyimana, Senior Genomics Researcher at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, welcomed the addtion, saying, “Having Pathoplexus support the inclusion of the Marburg virus on its platform will tremendously benefit our work in Rwanda and the region. It will give our lab and the broader research community a secure, user-friendly way to upload and share sequences under both open and restricted-use protection, while enabling us to access, compare and download global Marburg data from one place - a critical resource for surveillance, outbreak preparedness, and timely public-health response.”
As with other organisms, you can share Marburgvirus data as “Open” immediately or specify that data be “Restricted-Use” for up to 1 year, before becoming Open. Restricted-Use data is still available but is restricted in how it can be used in publications or preprints. All Open data is sent on to INSDC-member databases.
We hope that by adding Marburgvirus to Pathoplexus we can support the response efforts underway for the current outbreak, and in future outbreaks. In addition, we hope to continue expanding the pathogens that Pathoplexus can support in the future.