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 The two-part shot from Johnson & Johnson and Danish partner Bavarian
Nordic induced a durable immune response lasting a full year in 100
percent of healthy volunteers vaccinated, researchers reported.
"The persistence of vaccine-induced immunity to one year
post-immunization is truly impressive," said researcher Matthew
Snape of the University of Oxford.
"The fact that all participants retained Ebola-specific antibodies
to the end of the study does raise hope that this vaccine could
induce responses that last for several years."
The vaccine requires one dose to prime the immune system and a
second shot to boost the body's response.
That is different from another Ebola vaccine from Merck, which was
the first to prove effective in preventing human infection during a
large trial in Guinea last year.
Scientists have been racing to develop vaccines for Ebola after more
than 11,300 people died in West Africa's 2013-2016 epidemic. Recent
progress means experts are now confident the world will not be
defenseless when the next outbreak hits.
There is debate, however, as to the best vaccination strategy for
different groups at risk.
While Merck's rVSV-EBOV shot could be deployed to provide "ring
vaccination" of people in recent contact with new Ebola cases, a
longer-lasting option might be a better bet for healthy support
workers coming in to fight the crisis.
The "prime-boost" vaccine developed by J&J and Bavarian Nordic is
currently being tested in large global trials that include more than
1,000 subjects in Africa.
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Results from those studies are still awaited but the vaccine has
already been submitted to the World Health Organization for
Emergency Use Assessment and Listing, which could allow it to be
deployed on an accelerated basis in the event another Ebola crisis.
J&J said it had a stockpile of 1.8 million dosing regimens on
standby in deep freeze, with the capacity to produce several million
more if needed.
"We are so much more advanced now than two or three years ago," said
Paul Stoffels, J&J's chief scientific officer. "We are ready to
intervene if tomorrow there was a new emergency."
Keith Chappell from the University of Queensland said the data to
date was encouraging, especially since the J&J vaccine was
non-replicating and therefore potentially safer than the Merck shot.
The findings, based on a Phase I clinical trial involving 75 healthy
subjects, were published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler and Will Boggs; Editing by Mark Potter)
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