Ebola virionsWIKIMEDIA, PLOS BIOLOGYThe World Health Organization (WHO) announced at a news conference in Geneva this week (October 21) that two experimental Ebola vaccines, already undergoing Phase 1 clinical trials in the United States and other countries outside of the affected zone, could be entered into large-scale trials in West Africa in January. Meanwhile, three other vaccines are expected to begin safety testing in regions outside the epidemic by March.
In preparation, Johnson & Johnson, which is co-developing one of the experimental vaccines with the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, is committing $200 million to the program; the firms aim to produce as many as 250,000 doses by May and a million total next year. “Typically, you don’t make hundreds of thousands of vaccines before you know what the safety and immunogenicity is,” Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson, told The New York Times. “This time, we will do that.” GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which is developing an experimental Ebola vaccine in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, is also working to pump out its product. “We are doing everything we can to produce as many doses as we can as quickly as we ...
