STAT+ Has A Scoop: The Three Sudan Ebola Vaccine Candidates Are Beginning Head To Head Testing Inside Uganda...

This is a very welcome development. And yet, it may come so late in the current outbreak cycle in Uganda, that a definitive proof of efficacy will be. . . under-powered, for lack of an "n" large enough. We shall see.

But it is good news, and far better to have a working vaccine you no longer need, than to have no vaccine candidates available, when a flare up occurs. And they invariably do.

Here is the latest -- even as weekly new case totals have begun to decline, in-country:

. . .The three experimental vaccines that will be tested build off of existing vaccine experience. One is being produced by the not-for-profit group IAVI and uses the same vaccine platform as Merck’s Ebola Zaire vaccine, Ervebo; in fact, Merck made the doses that will be used in the clinical trial. It uses a livestock virus known as vesicular stomatitis virus that has been modified to carry a key protein from the Ebola Sudan virus. . . .

The two other vaccines — one is being developed by the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit, while the other is being developed by the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute — use adenoviruses that normally infect chimpanzees to introduce the immune system to a surface protein from Ebola Sudan viruses. The Jenner Institute used the same vaccine platform when it designed AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine. . . .

Now you know -- with some Elizabeth Holmes-ian arcania / trivia up. . . next!

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