New Ebola vaccine trial begins on HWN EBOLA UPDATE

The trial of two new Ebola vaccine (prime-boost immunisations) developed by Bavarian Nordic, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, has begun with volunteers in Britain, France and Senegal. A report from London said the mid-stage, or Phase II, trials are designed primarily to test the vaccines’ safety. It said it would also assess whether they provoke an immune response against the deadly virus.

It said the development of the prime-boost and other vaccines was accelerated in response to vast outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa, where at least 11,200 people have died so far in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Egeruan Imoukhuede, who was coordinating one of the trials in Senegal, said the current Ebola outbreak has reinforced that speed of response was crucial. “Outbreak diseases spread quickly, so any vaccination approach must be able to keep up.

He said this has become imperative because the data from WHO showed that there were 30 confirmed cases of Ebola in West Africa in the week to July 5. “In Liberia, which had been declared Ebola-free in May, a sixth new case was confirmed on July 14 in what health officials fear is a new wave of the outbreak.” Imoukhuede said while the number of Ebola cases had dropped sharply in recent months, researchers said the flare-up in Liberia underlines the need to push ahead with developing potential vaccines that might help control this and future outbreaks. Meanwhile, Bavarian said the trial of the Bavarian Nordic and J&J prime-boost combination initially aimed to recruit more than 600 healthy adult volunteers in Britain and France had begun.

It expressed the hope to launch another later phase of this trial in Africa later this year involving 1,200 volunteers, but other large clinical trials have recently been thwarted by the drop in case numbers. It said the previously planned trials of GSK, Merck and J&J shots in West Africa have been struggling to recruit volunteers with enough exposure to Ebola. It said this was to prove whether their vaccines are doing the job and preventing infection.

Bavarian said the second trial would be conducted in Senegal and uses two vaccines tested first in people at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and being developed in a partnership with GSK. It disclosed that the first, based on a chimpanzee adenovirus, was designed to stimulate, or prime, an initial immune response, while the second is designed to boost that response.

Bavarian said each vaccine was based on genetically modifying safe viruses to carry just one part of the Ebola virus that would stimulate the body’s immune system. Researchers stressed that none of the shots contains any live Ebola virus.

Source: Reuters, HWN Africa.