DR Congo Ebola vaccine trial to begin within weeks: WHO
The first clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine is expected to begin in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the end of October, World Health Organization experts said on Tuesday.
The move comes as DR Congo’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak has passed the 9,000-case mark, with deaths exceeding 4,000. The outbreak has infected 9,066 people so far and caused 4,381 deaths, a fatality rate of 48.3%, according to the Congolese National Institute of Public Health (INSP).
The current outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, has no approved vaccines or treatments. The trial, named Tumaini, will test whether Ervebo — a vaccine approved for use against the more common Zaire strain — offers any cross-protection against Bundibugyo.”We have got strong reassurances that it should be starting before the end of this month,” said Anthony Scott, chair of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE).
The WHO said the Tumaini trial — a single trial framework that can test the efficacy of multiple vaccines — will also eventually incorporate two Bundibugyo-specific candidate vaccines. One is a ChAdOx1 adenoviral vector vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford; the other, by US-based Moderna, uses mRNA technology.
SAGE said the trial “will generate urgently-needed data on the efficacy of Ervebo against Bundibugyo virus disease, and will help formulate the policy decisions we need.”Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders is conducting a separate data-gathering study of Ervebo’s effectiveness in frontline health workers in DRC provinces hard-hit by the outbreak.
