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 There is currently no proven vaccine against the deadly disease but
several companies are racing to develop products. Clinical tests on
two - from GlaxoSmithKline and NewLink Genetics - are already under
way.
The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes that tens of thousands of
people in West Africa, including frontline healthcare workers at
high risk of infection, can start receiving Ebola vaccines from
January as part of large-scale clinical trials.
J&J said on Wednesday that it would test its vaccine for safety and
immune response in healthy volunteers in Europe, the United States
and Africa from early January, adding that it will commit up to $200
million to accelerate the program.
The J&J vaccine was discovered in collaboration with the U.S.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) and includes technology from
Denmark-based Bavarian Nordic, which will now receive a cash
injection from the American healthcare company.
The total potential deal value for Bavarian Nordic could be more
than $187 million, including upfront payments, milestone payments
based on product progress, a supply contract and the purchase by J&J
of shares in the Danish biotech business.
Bavarian Nordic's share price jumped 19 percent in early trading
after the announcement of J&J's plans.
SIMPLIFIED VACCINE
West Africa's Ebola outbreak began in March and has killed more than
4,500 people, most of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea,
according to the WHO. Outbreaks in Senegal and Nigeria have been
declared over by the WHO and there have been a handful of cases in
Spain and the United States.
J&J has simplified and fast-tracked its vaccine program in the light
of the world's worst Ebola outbreak, which is still ravaging the
three worst-hit West African countries.
Originally it had been working to develop a vaccine against both the
Zaire and Sudan strains of Ebola, as well as a related condition
called Marburg disease.
That long-term program will continue, but J&J is now also developing
a vaccine targeting only the Zaire strain behind the current
epidemic, which is a more straightforward project and should
therefore yield results faster.
"We have an important responsibility as a leading global healthcare
company to do all we can to address this urgent unmet medical need,"
J&J Chief Executive Alex Gorsky said in a statement.
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The U.S. company added that it is also seeking additional partners
and resources to assist in its efforts to increase vaccine
production and speed the clinical trial program.
PROMISING SIGN
Although the safety and effectiveness of J&J's and other
experimental vaccines has yet to be proven, they have provided good
protection against the Zaire strain of Ebola when tested on macaque
monkeys, which is seen as a promising sign that they are likely to
work in humans.
Like a number of experimental vaccines against various diseases,
J&J's vaccine uses a common cold virus, called an adenovirus, to
carry its payload.
Immunisation with the J&J vaccine, which was developed by its
Crucell unit in the Netherlands, consists of two injections: one to
prime the immune system and a second to boost the response. They
were given two months apart in the monkey tests. By contrast,
researchers are testing a single shot of GSK's vaccine.
How safe and effective J&J's product will be in humans remains to be
seen, but more than 1,000 people have already received similar
experimental vaccines from Crucell in clinical trials for other
diseases with no apparent ill effects, offering some reassurance.
Bavarian Nordic, meanwhile, has used a similar approach in producing
a smallpox vaccine that has been stockpiled around the world and
tested on more than 7,000 people.
(Additional reporting by Supriya Kurane in Bangalore; Editing by
David Goodman)
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