Industry Odisha Bureau, July 25: In recent news, a 37-year-old man in the United Kingdom has become the first person in the world to receive an experimental vaccine against the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus.
The man, Ed Hunt, received the vaccine in Oxford as part of Phase 1 clinical trial. Further, researchers will be recruiting 50 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 55. This will be to assess the vaccine’s safety and its ability to trigger an immune response.
Ed Hunt said that he decided to participate after following news reports about the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo. He added that he had also wanted to volunteer for the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trial but could not.
Scientists at the University of Oxford developed the vaccine in just eight weeks using the same platform that powered the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
Professor Teresa Lambe said that decades of research enabled the rapid development of the vaccine. Notable, Prof. Lambe leads the Ebola vaccine team at the University of Oxford. She further stressed that the trial does not expose volunteers to the Ebola virus. Instead, researchers will evaluate whether the vaccine is safe and generates a strong immune response against the Bundibugyo strain.
In addition, the Oxford team plans to launch another small trial in Uganda, followed by a larger efficacy study in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Serum Institute of India has already manufactured 6,00,000 doses of the vaccine. The doses could be deployed if clinical trials prove successful.
