GSK Announces Success On Ebola Trial Vaccine

GlaxoSmithKline has announced an initial
success on phase 1 trial of an Ebola vaccine.
The first results from the trial published on
Thursday in the New England Journal of

Medicine showed that a GSK and National
Institute of Health Ebola candidate vaccine was
well-tolerated and produced an immunological
response in each of the 20 healthy adult
volunteers in the United States who received it.
In a statement released on Thursday by the
pharmaceutical company, the vaccine used in the
trial conducted by the NIH was co-developed by
the institute’s National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases and Okairos, a biotechnology
company acquired by GSK in 2013.
The statement read in part, “It uses a type of
chimpanzee cold virus, known as chimpanzee
adenovirus type 3 (ChAd3), as a carrier to deliver
genetic material from two strains of the Ebola
virus – the Sudan strain and the Zaire strain,
which is responsible for the current Ebola
outbreak in West Africa.
“GSK has been working with the NIH to
accelerate development of both this bivalent
version of the candidate vaccine and a
monovalent version targeting only the Zaire
strain in response to the current Ebola epidemic.”
Commenting on the results, Chairman of Global
Vaccines at GSK, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, said, “We
are very encouraged by these positive first trial
results showing this type of vaccine has an
acceptable safety profile and can produce an
immune response against Ebola in humans.
Working with partners including the NIH, we’re
doing all we can to advance development of a
candidate vaccine in response to the Ebola crisis
in West Africa.
“It’s important to remember that these data are
the first piece in the jigsaw and we’re continuing
to gather other important information. Over the
coming weeks, we will see results from further
phase 1 trials which will tell us more about the
profile of the monovalent vaccine; most
significantly results from a trial in Mali which is
assessing its safety and immune response in
West African populations.
“If the combined data from these trials are
positive, the next phases of the clinical trial
programme will begin in early 2015 to see
whether the immune response we are seeing in
phase 1 actually translates into providing people
in affected countries with meaningful protection
against Ebola.”
Slaoui added that the phase 3 trials would
involve the vaccination of thousands of
volunteers, including frontline health-care
workers in affected countries, including Liberia
and Sierra Leone, and possibly Guinea.
“If the candidate vaccine is able to protect these
healthcare workers as we hope it will, it could
significantly contribute to efforts to bring this
epidemic under control,” he noted.

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