Race for vaccine against rare Ebola strain gets $8.5m boost

The “most promising” vaccine to tackle the Ebola strain behind an explosive outbreak in the Congo has been given an $8.5 million boost, as researchers race to develop an effective shot. So far at least 3,360 people have been infected and 1,487 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in an epidemic triggered by the Bundibungyo species of Ebola. But unlike past outbreaks of the more common Zaire strain, there are currently no approved vaccines to tackle Bundibungyo. Such tools are desperately needed: the United Nations has warned that Ebola is outpacing the response, with the outbreak on track to become the worst in the DRC’s history. A human trial has already been launched for a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, using the same ChAdOx1 technology that the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid shot was based on. The first person was injected in Oxford last week – Ed Hunt, a 37-year-old from the UK. But on Thursday, the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) revealed up to $8.5 million of funding for the only single-dose inoculation, which was described as the “most promising vaccine candidate” by the World Health Organization (WHO) in an analysis in May. It is being developed by researchers at Hilleman Laboratories – a unique partnership between the pharmaceutical giant Merck and the British philanthropic powerhouse Wellcome, which is headquartered in Singapore.