While a nurse being treated for Ebola at NIH has gotten most of the media attention, the Bethesda-based federal agency has also been busy working on potential vaccines for the virus.
On Wednesday, NIH announced human testing on a second investigational Ebola vaccine candidate is underway at its Clinical Center on its Rockville Pike campus.
Researchers from the agency’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are testing the vaccine, called VSV-ZEBOV, for safety and its ability to create what’s called a “prime-boost” in a human’s immune system.
Early human testing of another investigational Ebola vaccine co-developed by NIAID and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) began in early September. Initial data on that vaccine candidate is expected by the end of 2014.
Phase 1 of the clinical trial for VSV-ZEBOV will include 39 healthy adults age 18 to 65. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Ten participants in each group will receive the potential vaccine and three will receive a placebo.
Each of the three groups will receive a different dose of the possible vaccine as the trial goes on. Participants will get an injection of the possible vaccine or placebo at their first scheduled visit and again about a month later.
All will be evaluated by clinical staff 11 times over the next year:
VSV-Zebov is based in part on a genetically engineered version of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which primarily affects rodents, cattle, swine and horses. Human VSV infections are rare and generally produce three to four days of mild illness. In the VSV-ZEBOV investigational vaccine, the gene for the outer protein of the vesicular stomatitis virus has been replaced with a segment of the gene for the outer protein of the Zaire Ebola virus species. The investigational VSV-ZEBOV vaccine cannot cause a vaccinated individual to become infected with Ebola.
Meanwhile, NIH has also announced that the Ebola-infected nurse’s condition has improved from “fair” to “good” condition.
Nina Pham, one of two nurses who contracted Ebola in a Dallas hospital while treating a patient there, was moved to a special isolation unit at NIH last Thursday.
Her arrival attracted a swarm of television trucks and helicopters.
A press release on Tuesday announced Pham’s condition had improved and she “has expressed her gratitude for everyone’s concerns and well wishes.”
The recent outbreak of the Ebola virus is blamed for the deaths of almost 5,000 people in west Africa over the last few months.
