Trials for new Ebola vaccines are now underway in Canada and the UK but the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) said Tuesday volunteers are needed to participate in increasing clinical experiments as deaths and cases soar in the largest ever outbreak on record in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Trials for potential therapeutics to fight the Ebola Bundibugyo virus are being conducted on ferrets and monkeys, after which results would be analysed by W.H.O. as the first-in-human trials get underway.
The first of four UK vaccine candidates has entered clinical trials which are being developed by biotechnology companies Moderna and Public Health Vaccines, non-profit research organisation International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and the University of Oxford, the BMJ reports.
“We are trying to ramp up the enrolment,” said Vasee Moorthy, acting lead of W.H.O.’s R&D Blueprint. “Because they’re a clinical trial, we have to have safe, monitoring of the people that are enrolled in the trial. And that does take time to have more and more teams and more sites enrolling.”
The U.N. notes a clinical trial of a potential post-exposure prophylaxis – or preventative – medicine is underway in Ituri province Congo.
A nurse wears protective medical clothing and prepares a syringe by drawing a dose from a vaccine vial during the launch of an Ebola trial vaccination campaign at Mulago Referral Hospital in Kampala on February 3, 2025. (BADRU KATUMBA/AFP via Getty)
Led by the DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research with an international consortium of research and outbreak-response partners, the trial has enrolled over 25 patients to evaluate whether an oral medicine given for 10 days to confirmed high risk contacts could prevent onset of disease.
More volunteers will be needed soon to continue the research.
A total of 3,748 cases, including 1,657 deaths and 708 recoveries, stand as of 1 August, according to W.H.O.
This is the 17th major outbreak of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976, but only the third known outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is currently no licenced vaccine or approved treatment.
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