Paul Doyle / Alamy
The 2014 outbreak of Ebola virus disease has sparked international efforts to develop a vaccine. One candidate being developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a replication-defective recombinant chimpanzee adenovirus type 3–vectored ebolavirus vaccine (cAd3-EBO). It is bivalent, offering protection against the Zaire and Sudan strains, and has already demonstrated activity in a nonhuman primate model.
Now, preliminary results from a Phase I study published in The New England Journal of Medicine (online, 26 November 2014)[1]
involving 20 healthy adults indicate that the vaccine is both immunogenic and safe. Immune responses to a single dose of vaccine were dose-dependent and there were no major adverse events, although two participants given the higher dose developed transient fever.
Clinical trials of cAd3-EBO are ongoing. GSK says it could produce one million doses a month by the end of 2015.
