First US Trial for Ebola Vaccine

In the first test of an Ebola virus vaccine in the US, the University of Maryland announced it will soon start human trials. The project is led by Myron Levine, MD, DTPH, director of the university’ s School of Medicine.

The goal is to evaluate the different dosing levels of the vaccine, which was developed by the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The project is funded By the National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmith Kline.

The university is also conducting a trial of the vaccine in Mali, in partnership with the Ministry of Health of Mali.

The new vaccine is designed to protect against both the Zaire and the Sudan strains of the virus. The Mali vaccine protects only against the Zaire species.

The US trial will vaccinate 20 volunteers. Half will get the vaccine at one dose, the second group will get a different dose. The results will be compared with those of the Mali trial.

The vaccine will be delivered in an adenovirus, that does not contain the full virus, just a single Ebola protein.

Commenting on the trial, Ripley Ballou, MD, head of Ebola vaccine research at Glaxo, said “We are accelerating development of this Ebola candidate vaccine at an unprecedented rate to try to help with help with the control of this terrible outbreak.

University of Maryland School of Medicine has an international reputation for creating and testing vaccines, including vaccines for cholera, typhoid, non-typhoid salmonella, dysentery and many other diseases.

In addition to testing drugs at its facilities in Baltimore, the center has research units in Africa, Asia, and Latin American