Oxford Trial Shows Acceptable Profile for Ebola Candidate Vaccine

The first results from a trial of a candidate Ebola vaccine at Oxford University suggest the vaccine has an acceptable safety profile at the doses tested, and is able to generate an immune response.

‘The vaccine was well tolerated. Its safety profile is pretty much as we had hoped,’ said Professor Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, who led the trial. The researchers say these results suggest the vaccine is suitable for further testing in West Africa during the current outbreak, with the aim of determining whether the vaccine offers protection against Ebola. The Oxford University trial is one of several safety trials of the GSK/NIH vaccine candidate – in the USA, UK, Mali and Switzerland – that have been fast-tracked in response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa

The candidate Ebola vaccine is being co-developed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GSK against the Zaire strain of Ebola, which is the one circulating in West Africa. The first doses for use in large scale trials in West Africa have been delivered to Liberia by GSK.

The UK trial is funded by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (MRC) and Department for International Development (DFID). The NIH is providing the NIH/GSK Ebola vaccine for the Oxford University study.

Initial findings have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)