EbolaEbola vaccine trials begin in Mali
The Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM), in conjunction with the Center for Vaccine Development of Mali (CVD-Mali) and the Ministry of Health of Mali, have begun a clinical trial in health care workers (and other front-line workers) to evaluate a promising experimental Ebola vaccine. The trial began on Wednesday, 8 October, with the vaccination of the first subject, followed by two additional participants on 9 October — all three being Malian health care workers. In the coming weeks, thirty-seven more health care workers will receive the vaccine.
Professor Myron M. Levine, director of the Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) and UM SOM dean E. Albert Reece announced last week that the CVD, in conjunction with its sister institution, the Center for Vaccine Development of Mali (CVD-Mali) and the Ministry of Health of Mali, have begun a clinical trial in health care workers (and other front-line workers) to evaluate a promising experimental Ebola vaccine.
The trial began on Wednesday, 8 October, with the vaccination of the first subject, followed by two additional participants on 9 October — all three being Malian health care workers. In the coming weeks, thirty-seven more health care workers will receive the vaccine.
“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, health care workers in West Africa,” said Prof. Levine. “If it works, in the foreseeable future it could help alter the dynamic of this epidemic by interrupting transmission to health care and other exposed front-line workers.”
A UMD release reports that the vaccine consists of an adenovirus (cold virus) that does not cause illness in humans and has been modified so that it cannot even multiply in humans but produces a single attachment protein of Ebola virus. Immune responses directed against this single Ebola protein have been shown to be highly protective in animal model challenge studies (carried out under the highest level of physical containment). Researchers hope this response will be robust enough to protect humans, as well, from the disease.
