The increasing number of Ebola cases in West Africa and the need for a vaccine that could protect people from contacting the deadly disease that many fear could potentially reach other parts of the globe, have prompted companies and federal agencies to speed up the development of vaccines that could provide protection against the virus.
On Aug. 28, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that the Ebola vaccine it has developed together with pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline will be tested on human subjects starting this week and it appears that companies are now following suit in conducting human trials for their own version of Ebola vaccine.
In a statement released on Thursday, Johnson & Johnson said that human trials for its Ebola vaccine that was derived from the technologies developed by Crucell N.V., a part of its Janssen pharmaceutical companies in Netherlands, and Denmark's biotech company Bavarian Nordic, will be started early next year. The company's accelerated vaccine program has received funding from the NIAID and will also utilize the agency's vaccine preclinical services.
"Our primary goal in this escalating Ebola epidemic is to assist governments in protecting health care workers, families and populations who are at high risk of being infected with Ebola as soon as possible in an effort to stop the disease from spreading further," Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said in statement. "We aim to ultimately eradicate deadly diseases like Ebola and save lives around the world."
The number of deaths caused by the Ebola outbreak that currently affects Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia and Guinea in West Africa has already surpassed 1,500. Nearly 3,100 have also contracted the disease as of Aug. 28 and more may become infected as the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the epidemic continues to accelerate. Over 40 percent of the total Ebola cases in West Africa, for instance, only occurred in 21 days albeit most of the cases are concentrated in few areas.
The absence of vaccines and treatment against Ebola is largely attributed to the continued spread of the disease. The treatment given to the two Americans who contracted the virus in Liberia has not yet been fully tested in humans and is still considered an experimental cure. Although some Ebola vaccines have shown promise in studies involving primates, there is the possibility that the results won't be replicated in humans.
