New Quick-Acting Ebola Vaccine Offers Complete Protection with just One Dose

The University of Texas scientists have developed a quick and safe Ebola vaccine, that shows its effect against the Ebola strain with just one dose.

Created by an interdisciplinary team from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Profectus BioSciences, Inc., the vaccine, effective against Ebola Zaire with a single dose in a nonhuman primate model, has been undergoing testing in the Galveston National Laboratory, the only fully operational Biosafety Level 4 laboratory on an academic campus in the U.S.

US Doctor Develops New Tool That Predicts Ebola Infection Risk
Using his experience of treating Ebola-infected patients, Dr. Adam Levine derived A clinical prediction model that indicates whether a patient should be in isolation.

This new vaccine employs a virus not harmful to humans called vesicular stomatitis virus that had a part of the Ebola virus inserted into it. This "Trojan horse" vaccine safely triggered an immune response against Ebola Zaire.

UTMB professor Thomas Geisbert said that the findings may pave the way for the identification and manufacture of safer, single dose, high efficiency vaccines to combat current and future Ebola outbreaks.

To address any possible safety concerns associated with this vaccine, the team developed two next generation candidate vaccines that contain further weakened forms of the vaccine. Both of these vaccines produced an approximately ten-fold lower level of virus in the blood compared to the first generation vaccine.

Phase 1 Clinical Trial of Ebola Vaccine Passes Safety Test, Shows Good Immune Response
A new study has revealed that an experimental Ebola vaccine called VSV-EBOV appears safe and generates immune response in a small phase 1 clinical trial.

Chief Scientific Officer, John Eldridge, said that the findings show that their candidate vaccines provided complete, single dose protection from a lethal amount of the Makona strain of Ebola virus.

Both weakened vaccines have features of the Mayinga strain of Ebola virus, as do most other candidate Ebola Zaire vaccines currently under evaluation. The original 1976 Mayinga strain and the new West African Makona strain are quite similar. The researchers said it was important to test their candidate vaccines on the Makona strain to ensure that even small differences between the strains didn’t impact the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Ontario Patient With Symptoms of Ebola Tests Negative at Sunnybrook
The patient had returned to Canada from West Africa 10 days earlier and was put into isolation as a precaution when Ebola-like symptoms began to appear.

The findings are published in Nature.

Source-ANI

Texas Health Resources Sued Over Lack of Ebola Training Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit
The company said that the hospital acted responsibly to protect their employees, basing their responses on the most up-to-date federal guidelines.