Ebola: Two vaccines against Bundibugyo enter into clinical trial

Dthe vaccines that are being developed specifically for the Bundibugyo virus will be part of the clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an Ebola epidemic has already killed 5,100 people.

The announcement was made today by the World Health Organization (WHO), following the recommendation of a group of independent experts that the vaccines of the University of Oxford, developed in cooperation with the Serum Institute of India, and the Modern Pharmaceuticals should be part of the Tumaini clinical trial that has been under way in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo) since the end of October.

This is the first time that vaccines specifically designed to protect against the Bundibugyo virus will be evaluated during an Ebola outbreak, the United Nations Health Agency has advanced.

According to WHO, the recommendation for additional clinical evaluation of the two vaccines was issued based on initial preclinical and clinical data already available and the entities that are developing them were informed on Monday.

“ The fact that these vaccines are ready to enter clinical trials is a testimony to the power of science and partnership,” WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus said, pointing out that vaccines will not end the Ebola outbreak, but “can become a powerful new tool to control it.”.

Tumaini was designed to test several candidate vaccines in a single trial, using a ring vaccination approach involving contacts of people with disease confirmed by the Bundibugyo virus, the WHO also explained.

This clinical trial platform is also testing another existing vaccine against Ebola’s Zaire strain to evaluate its efficacy against Bundibugyo virus now.

More than 5,100 people died due to the Ebola epidemic in RRDCongo, where nearly 10,500 cases of virus infection have been reported, according to data updated on Tuesday by the authorities of the country.

The epidemic in DRCongo is already the deadliest in the country's history and projections point to the fact that it may overcome the outbreak in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, which left 28,616 confirmed cases and 11,325 killed in Guinea-Conakry, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to WHO data.