Accelerating Vaccine Development During the 2013-2016 West African Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak.

Accelerating Vaccine Development During the 2013-2016 West African Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2017 Sep 17;: Authors: Higgs ES, Dubey SA, Coller BAG, Simon JK, Bollinger L, Sorenson RA, Wilson B, Nason MC, Hensley LE Abstract The Ebola virus disease outbreak that began in Western Africa in December 2013 was unprecedented in both scope and spread, and the global response was slower and less coherent than was optimal given the scale and pace of the epidemic. Past experience with limited localized outbreaks, lack of licensed medical countermeasures, reluctance by first responders to direct scarce resources to clinical research, community resistance to outside interventions, and lack of local infrastructure were among the factors delaying clinical research during the outbreak. Despite these hurdles, the global health community succeeded in accelerating Ebola virus vaccine development, in a 5-month interval initiating phase I trials in humans in September 2014 and initiating phase II/III trails in February 2015. Each of the three Ebola virus disease-affected countries, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, conducted a phase II/III Ebola virus vaccine trial. Only one of these trials evaluating recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus expressing Ebola virus glycoprotein demonstrated vaccine efficacy using an innovative mobile ring vaccination trial design based on a ring vaccination strategy responsible for eradicat...
Source: Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology - Category: Microbiology Tags: Curr Top Microbiol Immunol Source Type: research