The AP (via the Washington Post) is reporting that the NIH has passed safety trials on a DNA vaccine for the Ebola virus.
From the article:
[Dr. Gary Nabel] and colleagues at the NIH's Vaccine Research Center developed a vaccine made of DNA strands that encode three Ebola proteins. They boosted that vaccine with a weakened cold-related virus, and the combination protected monkeys exposed to Ebola.
The first human testing looked just at the vaccine's DNA portion; the full combination will be tested later.
It will be interesting to see how they go about testing the effectiveness of the vaccine in humans. There is at present no cure for Ebola, so who is going to volunteer for the test?
The vaccine was reported at a meeting last month. I'll post additional details as they become available.
Leave a comment