CRXL 17000 traded now premarket. The news on this one is SEEPING out.. :) Probably better that way.
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Ebola Vaccine Could Become
A Model for Other Ailments
By MARILYN CHASE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In an announcement with major implications for vaccine development, scientists said they tested a single-shot vaccine against the Ebola virus that protected 100% of monkeys that were exposed to the deadly hemorrhagic fever.
The success of the vaccine, made from a weakened cold-like virus loaded with Ebola genes, has "enormous public-health implications" as a model for vaccines against other viruses, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a unit of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
Human-safety studies of the Ebola vaccine could begin late next year, said the study's senior author, Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center of the NIAID in Bethesda. The report is published Thursday in the journal Nature.
Crucell NV, a biotechnology company based in Leiden, Netherlands, will manufacture the Ebola vaccine. For future SARS-vaccine development, Dr. Nabel is working with GenVec Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md.
If the Ebola vaccine clears human-safety tests, Dr. Nabel said he hopes to offer the vaccine to African countries for use in Ebola outbreaks, assuming it receives a compassionate-use nod from the Food and Drug Administration.
This year, Ebola outbreaks in the Republic of Congo killed at least 128 people through May, according to the World Health Organization. Previous Ebola outbreaks have stricken more than 1,500 people and killed more than 1,000 in the former Zaire, Sudan, Uganda, Gabon and Ivory Coast since the virus was discovered in 1976.
Ebola, which is almost always fatal, causes its victims to bleed to death. The virus is transmitted by contact with body fluids, or by handling infected chimpanzees. Scientists have probed the rain forests of Africa and Asia but haven't discovered the animal reservoir of the virus. Among the possibilities, the WHO says, the virus could have emerged from rodents or bats that can become infected but don't die.
In 2000, Dr. Nabel reported success with a two-step Ebola vaccine: a priming injection of noninfectious Ebola DNA, followed by a booster made from a weakened adenovirus, a respiratory virus, engineered to carry Ebola genes.
This prime-boost regimen sparked a strong immune response, but the process took six months.
Seeking faster protection, Dr. Nabel and his NIAID colleagues teamed up with Army virologist Peter Jahrling at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md. Testing just the booster shot in eight monkeys, they found all animals were protected from an Ebola virus injection one month later. Control animals given a placebo died.
The 100% survival rate in vaccinated monkeys left the researchers "pleasantly surprised," Dr. Jahrling said. Dr. Nabel said, "Obviously, we're thrilled we can protect against Ebola."
In future Ebola outbreaks, the researchers said, the single-booster shot might be used for "ring vaccination," a strategy of vaccinating around patients to shield exposed contacts, pioneered by the WHO to halt smallpox in the 1970s.
It isn't known whether this Ebola vaccine, based on the Zaire strain, also protects against the Sudan strain. Future studies will settle the question. |
