Race for the Effective Ebola Caccine

In this last three decades the Zaire Ebola virus (ZEBOV), the Sudan Ebola virus (SEBOV) and the newly discovered Bundibugyo Ebola virus (BEBOV) have caused major outbreaks with case fatality rates of 90%, (Zaire) 50% (Sudan) and 25% (Bundibugyo) (6,22). Ebola virus protection by transfusing recovering patient serum or administering anti-Ebola virus gamma globulin has proven to be a strong motivator to develop a safe and effective anti-Ebola virus vaccine (1,12,18,24).
There are at least a half a dozen different Ebola vaccines in development, but only two are currently undergoing clinical testing (3,15,20). One of these two vaccines, named cAd3-EBO, uses an adenovirus isolated from chimpanzees (serotype 3) (7,21) and engineered to express Ebola virus surface glycoprotein encoded by the Zaire and Sudan virus strains (19). The second vaccine undergoing clinical testing, named VSV-ZEBO, uses a vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) construct engineered to express the Zaire Ebola virus glycoprotein, (8,14). Continue reading →