Four days ago, the first volunteer was vaccinated against Bundibugyo ebolavirus. That is just 68 days after the World Health Organization declared the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda a public-health emergency of international concern. By 27 July, officials had confirmed 3,200 cases and 1,405 deaths in the DRC alone. The vaccine, called ChAdOx1, is being tested in a phase I clinical trial being run by the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, UK. ChAdOx1 uses the same vector platform as used in the Oxford'AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, but carries genetic instructions for Bundibugyo ebolavirus protein. Around 620,000 doses of the vaccine have already been manufactured. The trial aims to assess the safety of the vaccine and the immune response it generates before larger trials are rolled out in Uganda later this year. Two other vaccines are also in development: an mRNA vaccine developed by Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts,...
learn more
