“I think it’s realistic”, Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) told AFP yesterday, with clinical trials expected to get underway soon.
There is currently no vaccine or cure for the virulent disease, which has ravaged parts of West Africa and killed more than 900 since its outbreak in March.
The epidemic, which has mostly affected Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, is said to be the largest and most brutal in its history and has been declared an international public health emergency.
“Since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place… so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015,” Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, the head of immunisation and vaccines at the WHO, told French radio broadcaster RFI.
He also said that GlaxoSmithKline will start trials next month, with the British pharmaceutical giant having initially started its own development of the vaccine in May 2013.
It states on its website: “We are working with the US National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) to advance development of an early stage vaccine candidate for Ebola. GSK acquired the vaccine candidate when we purchased Okairos in May 2013.
“In collaboration with VRC, we have evaluated this vaccine candidate in pre-clinical studies and we are now discussing with regulators advancing it to a phase I clinical trial programme later this year.”
