‘Promising’ Ebola vaccine to go into trials – and it could be available by the end of the year

Britons are to be the first in the world to test a new vaccine against the deadly ebola virus.

Altogether 60 healthy volunteers will be given the vaccine next month in a trial led by Oxford University scientists.

If the vaccine performs as well in humans as in monkeys, the trial will be extended to 80 people in The Gambia and in Mali.

The entire trial programme is being fast-tracked – subject to ethical approval – with the intention of using the vaccine in people at high risk in West Africa early next year.

Latest figures show that more than 1,550 people have died from the virus, with more than 3,000 confirmed cases – mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

It is the worst epidemic since the disease was first identified 38 years ago and the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts the outbreak will last for many months, affecting at least 20,000 people.

At present there is no vaccine to prevent the disease and no proven treatment.

The new vaccine contains a single ebola virus protein from the strain sweeping West Africa – anyone inoculated with it cannot develop the disease itself.

It is different from the experimental medicine ZMapp being used to treat William Pooley, the first Briton to contract the virus while working as a nurse at a remote health centre in Sierra Leone.

The 29-year-old is currently in isolation at London’s Royal Free Hospital.

The new trial will be led by Professor Adrian Hill, of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, which has unprecedented experience in carrying out trials using similar types of vaccine.

He said the speed with which arrangements had been made was unparalleled in 20 years of experience in the field.

He said: ‘The tragic events unfolding in Africa demand an urgent response.

‘In recent years, similar investigational vaccines have safely immunised infants and adults against a range of diseases including malaria, HIV and Hepatitis C.

‘We, and all our partners on this project, are optimistic that this candidate vaccine may prove useful against ebola.’

The vaccine is being co-developed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, along with a dual vaccine containing proteins against both West Africa and Sudan strains of ebola which is being trialled in the US.

EBOLA COULD AFFECT MORE THAN 20,000, HEALTH CHIEFS WARN 

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa could infect more than 20,000 people, the World Health Organisation has revealed in a bleak assessment of the deadly disease.

The United Nations health agency issued plans to combat the outbreak in four West African nations – Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria – where it said the actual number of cases could already be two to four times higher than the reported 3,069.

The current death toll stands at 1,552.

Describing plans to tackle the West African outbreak, the WHO said: ‘This roadmap assumes that in many areas of intense transmission the actual number of cases may be two-four fold higher than that currently reported.’

The deadly West African outbreak that began in Guinea in March and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, requires a massive and coordinated international response, the WHO said.