As the Ebola outbreak continues to spread and claim lives in West Africa, the National Institutes of Health has decided to speed up the safety testing of vaccines that could potentially protect thousands of individuals from contracting the deadly virus.
A vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the NIH has shown promise in studies that involved primates and its efficacy and safety may soon be revealed with the announcement from the NIH that the first human trial for the vaccine will begin soon.
The phase I clinical trial called VRC 207 will assess the safety of the vaccine as well as determine whether it induces an immune response in humans that could provide protection against Ebola. The study will be conducted at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., starting this week and will involve 20 healthy adults between 18 and 50 years old who will be split into two groups. Participants in the first group will receive intramuscular injection of the experimental vaccine while participants in the second group will be given single injection of the vaccine at a higher dose.
"There is an urgent need for a protective Ebola vaccine, and it is important to establish that a vaccine is safe and spurs the immune system to react in a way necessary to protect against infection," said NIAID Director Anthony Fauci. "The NIH is playing a key role in accelerating the development and testing of investigational Ebola vaccines."
Safety features are integrated into the trial's design. Only three participants will be given the injection this week and they will be carefully watched before additional study participants will be added. Daily and weekly reviews of patient data will also be conducted and all the participants will be seen and assessed by clinical staff nine times in 48 weeks. The trial does not also involve infecting the human subjects with the Ebola virus.
"The vaccine itself does not contain infectious Ebola virus material, so, therefore, it cannot cause a person who's vaccinated to become infected," said GlaxoSmithKline vice president of public policy Donna Altenpohl.
The latest update from the World Health Organization revealed that the Ebola outbreak in West African continues to worsen. As of Aug. 28, 1,552 people have died because of Ebola, or nearly 50 percent of those who contracted the virus. Of the 3,069 cases, 40 percent have occurred within the last 21 days.
