Third Ebola Vaccine Gets Cash Infusion From U.S.
Federal
health officials are giving a small biotech company nearly $6 million
to speed up development of another vaccine against Ebola, the third in a
pipeline of vaccines to fight the virus.
Baltimore-based
Profectus BioSciences Inc has been working on the vaccine, made using
another virus called vesicular stomatitis virus. The virus is
genetically engineered to carry a piece of the Ebola virus to help
stimulate the immune system. “The company will manufacture vaccine for
use in animal safety studies and future clinical trials and conduct
animal studies to test safety. The contract can be extended to a total
of 13 months and $8.6 million,” an office within the Health and Human
Services Department said in a statement.
The National Institutes
of Health is helping with Phase 1 clinical trials — meant to show a
vaccine is safe — for an Ebola vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline and
one developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and licensed to
NewLink Genetics Corp. It’ll be months before any vaccine would be
available, and even then it will be a small amount, probably used to
protect health care workers. But experts say it’s a vital first step to
getting doctors, nurses and technicians to even come and help fight the outbreak in West Africa. Health workers are among those at highest risk of getting infected.
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