People who die of Ebola probably remain infectious for at least a week after death, according to a new study. The findings underscore how important it is to safely handle and bury corpses in the epidemic.

The halted trial was testing the antiviral drug brincidofovir at a clinic in Monrovia, Liberia. The developer of the drug, Chimerix, announced late Friday that it would no longer participate in the study.

The first large-scale trials of two experimental vaccines against Ebola have begun in Liberia. Scientists aim to immunise 30,000 volunteers, including front-line health workers.

Researchers have grown human skeletal muscle in the laboratory that, for the first time, contracts and responds just like native tissue to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals. The development should soon allow researchers to test new drugs and study diseases in functioning human muscle outside of the human body.

The bat immune system is astonishingly tolerant of most pathogens — a trait that could pose risks to people, but that also offers clues to preventing human diseases of aging, including cancer. Evidence is mounting that bats can serve as reservoirs of many of the world’s deadliest viruses, including the pathogens behind Ebola, Marburg and related hemorrhagic fevers; acute respiratory syndromes like SARS and MERS; and even familiar villains like measles and mumps.

A new test could slash the wait time for diagnoses and eliminate ineffective prescriptions.