Scientists at the National Institute of Heath are pushing ahead with human clinical trials for a new vaccine that is hoped to help fight the deadly Ebola Virus in West Africa.
“Stage 1 of the clinical trials, which were previously not expected to begin until the end of September, will start early next month in response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa” said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They hope to have stage 1 completed by the end of November, a full 2 months ahead of schedule.
“We’re dealing with an urgent situation,” Fauci said. “We want to respond as safely as we can but also as quickly as we can.”
The NIH’s Vaccine Research Center has been working on the vaccine for years with Okairos, a Swiss-Italian biopharmaceutical company now owned by British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline. The experimental vaccine has shown promising results in nonhuman primates, Fauci said. The vaccine will be tested on 20 healthy adults at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.
Known as a chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine, the experimental vaccine contains no infectious Ebola virus material. According to Fauci, the chimpanzee adenovirus is a “dead virus,” meaning it cannot replicate once it enters the body. The dead virus is intended to trigger the body to make antibodies, which would reproduce if a person was exposed to Ebola.
Researchers will compare the human immune response to the vaccine to previous tests on monkeys to determine whether the vaccine is effective. It remained unclear when the vaccine would be ready, but Fauci said it may be available sometime in 2015, depending on Food and Drug Administration approval.
The accelerated research effort has been ordered as part of a global effort to help relieve the crisis in West Africa where more than 1,100 people have died and over 2100 infected n Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.
Disease update
Confirmed, probable, and suspect cases and deaths from Ebola virus disease in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, as of 13 August 2014
| New (1) | Confirmed | Probable | Suspect | Totals | ||
| Guinea | ||||||
| Cases | 9 | 376 | 133 | 10 | 519 | |
| Deaths | 3 | 245 | 133 | 2 | 380 | |
| Liberia | ||||||
| Cases | 116 | 190 | 423 | 173 | 786 | |
| Deaths | 58 | 154 | 190 | 69 | 413 | |
| Nigeria | ||||||
| Cases | 0 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 12 | |
| Deaths | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | |
| Sierra Leone | ||||||
| Cases | 27 | 733 | 38 | 39 | 810 | |
| Deaths | 14 | 309 | 34 | 5 | 348 | |
| Totals | ||||||
| Cases | 152 | 1310 | 594 | 223 | 2127 | |
| Deaths | 76 | 712 | 357 | 76 | 1145 | |
| (1) New cases were reported between 12 and 13 August 2014. | ||||||
Last week, the Canadian government said it would donate 800 to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to the World Health Organization for use in Africa. To help encourage the development of treatments, the WHO has sanctioned the use of some experimental drugs that may help combat the outbreak.
We are all hoping that the global scientific community can work swiftly to develop the vaccine as although Ebola is only transmitted through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluid but for poorer nations with subpar sanitation and education it is a serious threat that needs global action.
Stay Curious – C.Costigan
