UK Regulator Clears First Human Trials of Oxford Ebola Vaccine

The UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency granted permission for human clinical trials of a new Ebola vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, The BBC reported. Scientists at the university began work on the candidate eight weeks earlier, after a public health emergency was declared on 17 May.

The Oxford vaccine is the first of four under development to reach the clinical-trial stage.

The first doses are expected to be administered to healthy UK adults within weeks, with volunteers already being recruited. The trial will enroll 50 adults aged 18 to 55 who will be monitored for one year. The current Ebola epidemic, centered on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has killed 625 people and produced 1,792 laboratory-confirmed cases, The BBC reported.

The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo species, for which no approved drugs or vaccines exist. The epidemic remains uncontrolled in a conflict zone with highly mobile populations. The vaccine uses the same viral-vector platform as the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

It employs a genetically modified chimpanzee common-cold virus carrying a snippet of genetic code from the Bundibugyo species. The candidate has already been tested in mice and macaque monkeys. The Serum Institute of India manufactured the vaccine to clinical standards and has stockpiled approximately 620,000 doses.

Dr. Katrina Pollock, chief investigator of the trial at the University of Oxford, told The BBC that phase-one studies of new vaccines are conducted routinely to prepare for outbreaks. Vaccine researcher Alex Sampson said development was scaled up rapidly once the outbreak was announced, with all standard tests performed in parallel rather than sequentially.