Study finds that Ebola vaccine is safe, stimulating strong immune responses
Drs. Tapia and Lyke are also Associate Professors in the Department of Pediatrics and Medicine, respectively, at CVD-UM SOM., provided overall coordination of this study that evaluated the experimental Ebola vaccine (ChAd3-EBO-Z) developed by the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Other key partners in the study included the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute and the World Health Organization.
The study was the result of a consortium of the World Health Organization (WHO), the VRC, the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, CVD-Mali, CVD-UM SOM, and GSK Biologicals (manufacturer of the vaccine).
The study also involved others at CVD-UM SOM, including Marcelo B. Sztein, M.D., and, James D. Campbell, M.D., M.S., both of whom are Professors of Pediatrics at UM SOM, as well as Rezwanul Wahid, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UM SOM.
“This is a crucial step on the road to using this vaccine in humans,” said Dr. Levine. “This gives us essential information that the vaccine is not only well-tolerated but the high dose stimulates strong immune responses in adults in West Africa, the global region where the Ebola outbreak was rampant last year.”
The vaccine consists of an adenovirus (cold virus) that has been modified so that, in humans, it does not cause illness and cannot multiply. It does not contain the entire virus, but a single Ebola protein. Immune responses directed against this attachment protein have been shown to be highly protective in animal studies (which are carried out under the highest level of physical containment).
“Ebola remains an urgent international public health problem. Dr. Levine and the CVD team have done excellent work with this study. It will give us crucial data that will eventually help those who are on the front lines of the fight against Ebola,” said UM SOM Dean E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., MBA, who is also vice president of medical affairs at the University of Maryland and the John Z. and Akiko Bowers Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “This is just one example of how our faculty are deeply involved in global health.”
The study compared the clinical acceptability and immune responses of twenty adult participants in Baltimore and ninety-one in Mali; each group was given different dosage levels of vaccine. The study found that there were no safety concerns, and recommended that further studies be carried out.
U Maryland notes that more than four decades of work have earned the University of Maryland School of Medicine CVD an international reputation for creating and testing vaccines against cholera, typhoid, non-typhoidal Salmonella, dysentery, malaria, and multiple other infectious diseases, including influenza. In addition to its research and outpatient facilities in Baltimore, the center conducts extensive research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
— Read more in Milagritos D Tapia et al., “Use of ChAd3-EBO-Z Ebola virus vaccine in Malian and US adults, and boosting of Malian adults with MVA-BN-Filo: a phase 1, single-blind, randomised trial, a phase 1b, open-label and double-blind, dose-escalation trial, and a nested, randomised, double-bli,” The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2015; DOI: 10.1016/S1473-3099(15)00362-X
