Shutterstock.com
An Ebola vaccine being developed by GlaxoSmithKline and the US National Institutes of Health is well tolerated and generates an immune response, according to initial testing of the vaccine in 60 healthy volunteers.
The vaccine candidate, known as ‘ChAd3’, uses a single Ebola virus gene delivered by a chimpanzee adenovirus-3 vector. It is designed to target the Zaire strain of Ebola, which is responsible for the current outbreak in West Africa that has caused more than 8,500 deaths.
Three doses of ChAd3 were tested, with volunteers being given a single dose and assessed for 4 weeks. At all doses, antibody and T-cell responses were detected and there were no safety concerns, according to the report published in The New England Journal of Medicine (online, 28 January 2015)[1]
. The vaccine will now be assessed in larger-scale studies in West Africa.
References
[1] Rampling T, Ewer K, Bowyer G et al. A Monovalent Chimpanzee Adenovirus Ebola Vaccine - Preliminary Report. N Engl J Med 2015.
