US to begin safety testing Ebola vaccine next week
View photo
FILE
- This Aug. 12, 2014 file photo shows a healthcare worker walking near a
Ebola isolation unit wearing protective gear against the virus at
Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone. Federal researchers
next week will start testing humans with an experimental vaccine to
prevent the deadly Ebola virus. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
announced Thursday that it is launching the safety trial on a vaccine
developed by the agency’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases and GlaxoSmithKline. They will test 20 healthy adult volunteers
to see if the virus is safe and triggers an adequate response in their
immune systems. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Federal researchers next week will start testing humans with an
experimental vaccine to prevent the deadly Ebola virus.
The National
Institutes of Health announced Thursday that it is launching the safety
trial on a vaccine developed by the agency's National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases and GlaxoSmithKline. It will test 20
healthy adult volunteers to see if the virus is safe and triggers an
adequate response in their immune systems.
Even
though NIH has been testing other Ebola vaccines in people since 2003,
this is a first for this vaccine and its trial has been speeded up
because the outbreak in West Africa "is a public health emergency that
demands an all-hands-on-deck response," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director
of the NIAID.
This isn't a
treatment for the disease, but a hoped-for preventative measure. Fauci
said the vaccine cannot cause Ebola in the volunteers being tested.
He cautioned that there is no guarantee it will work: "I have been fooled enough in my many years of experience."
Fauci
doesn't expect results from this initial round of testing until the end
of the year, emphasizing that public health measures such as
quarantine, isolation, infection control and personal protective devices
are still the best way to fight the outbreak that so far has killed at
least 1,552 people in West Africa.
The
World Health Organization Thursday estimated that the death toll could
eventually exceed 20,000, while announcing new efforts to fight what
Fauci called the "rapidly evolving and currently uncontrolled outbreak."
The
major target of the vaccine, if it works, would be health care workers,
although residents of the area could also be eligible for the shots,
Fauci said. More than 240 health workers have become infected in this
outbreak, and more than 120 have died, he said.
If it works,
people would get one shot in the arm to protect them from an immediate
threat and eventually a second shot for longer-term immunity, Fauci
said.Testing will be at NIH's campus in Bethesda, Maryland, and involve a mixture that uses both the current Zaire strain and another strain, Sudan. Later in September, NIH and a British team will test that vaccine on 100 volunteers in the United Kingdom, Gambia and Mali. American health officials are also talking about a future trial in Nigeria.
Then a different version of the vaccine, using only the Zaire strain, will be tested on another 20 adults in October at NIH and elsewhere in the United States.
Also
sometime in fall, Canadian and U.S. health officials will start safety
testing a different type of Ebola vaccine developed by NewLink Genetics
Corp. of Ames, Iowa.
The U.S.
vaccine takes a single protein from the Ebola virus and pairs it with a
chimpanzee cold virus to help as a delivery system. Past vaccines have
the used the same protein but different delivery systems.
A
British consortium has pledged $4.6 million to help speed up the
vaccine tests. With some of that money, GlaxoSmithKline will be able to
begin manufacturing up to 10,000 doses of the U.S. vaccine, if the tests
are successful.
This testing
"is exactly what needs to be done," said Pardis Sabeti, a Harvard
University professor who has been studying Ebola and was in Africa
working the outbreak.
___
NIH answers questions on the vaccine: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/Pages/EbolaVaxQA.aspx
___
Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
Original post found here:
Post a Comment