A healthy volunteer in the United Kingdom has become the first person to receive an experimental vaccine targeting the Bundibugyo species of Ebola virus. The 37-year-old participant, identified as Ed Hunt, received the vaccine in Oxford, where researchers developed the formulation in just eight weeks. Hunt indicated that news coverage of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo motivated him to participate in the trial after being unable to volunteer for a COVID-19 vaccine study due to scheduling conflicts.
The vaccine employs the same technology platform used in the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which was administered to hundreds of millions of people during the pandemic. Prof Teresa Lambe, who led the development team at the University of Oxford, noted that the rapid creation timeline was possible due to decades of prior research foundation. The initial phase of the trial aims to evaluate the vaccine’s safety profile and measure immune system responses that could provide protection against the Bundibugyo strain.
The Oxford study will recruit 50 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years old. Four vaccines are currently in development against Bundibugyo, but this is the first to advance to human testing. An existing licensed vaccine protects against the Zaire species of Ebola, but does not provide coverage for Bundibugyo. The research team plans to launch a second small trial in Uganda and subsequently conduct a larger efficacy study in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Serum Institute in India has already produced 600,000 doses of the Oxford vaccine in preparation for potential distribution should the clinical trials prove successful. As of the trial’s launch, the Democratic Republic of Congo had recorded more than 2,500 confirmed Ebola cases, resulting in just over 1,000 deaths.
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