University Begins Ebola Vaccine Trials In Malian Health Workers
The Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) announced that it has begun the clinical trial for its investigational Ebola vaccine for healthcare workers in collaboration with its sister institution the Center for Vaccine Development of Mali (CVD-Mali) and the Ministry of Health of Mali.
The investigational vaccine comprises a modified adenovirus (cold virus) that does not cause sickness in humans but contains a single attachment protein of Ebola virus. Data show that immune responses induced by the single Ebola protein provide strong protection in animal model challenge studies. The researchers hope the immune response induced by the vaccine will be able to protect humans from the deadly virus as well.
The trial was launched this month with the vaccination of the first three participants, all of them Malian heathcare workers. A total of 40 health workers will receive the vaccine against Ebola.
Professor Myron M. Levine, director of the CVD at UM SOM, said, “This research will give us crucial information about whether the vaccine is safe, well tolerated and capable of stimulating adequate immune responses in the highest priority target population, healthcare workers in West Africa. If it works, in the foreseeable future it could help alter the dynamic of this epidemic by interrupting transmission to healthcare and other exposed front-line workers.”
The vaccine was developed by a team of researchers at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda. Whereas an ordinary vaccine would take between six to 11 months to transition from research to clinical trials, the investigational Ebola vaccine was the fruit of two months’ work of a consortium assembled in August at the request of the World Health Organization in response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak crisis in Africa. The consortium included GlaxoSmithKline, which manufactured the vaccine and is currently working on increasing its capacity to produce Ebola vaccines.
Professor Samba Sow, director general of CVD-Mali, commented, “This is just the critical first step in a series of additional clinical trials that will have to be carried out to fully evaluate the promising vaccine. However, if it is eventually shown to work, and if this information can be generated fast enough, it could become a public health tool to bring the current, and future, Ebola virus disease epidemics under control."
A total of 8,997 cases of the disease have been reported to date in seven countries, the majority of which is in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Ebola has claimed almost 4,500 lives in West Africa since its outbreak, according to the WHO.