New data from a study in humans provides additional support to the idea that Merck’s Ebola vaccine Ervebo, licensed to target the Zaire species of ebolaviruses, could also offer some protection against another species currently circulating in a rapidly expanding outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The new paper, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine after previously having been posted online before peer review, is one of a growing number of studies pointing to the possibility that the vaccine could be used to target the Bundibugyo species of ebolaviruses.
These studies are in turn fueling an increase in calls to study use of Ervebo in the outbreak zone in the DRC, an idea that the World Health Organization has expressed lukewarm support for to date. The WHO’s vaccination efforts have prioritized testing Bundibugyo-specific vaccines, but those vaccines are still months away from being ready to be put into clinical trials in the outbreak zone.
In an email Wednesday, the WHO said its vaccines expert panel committee, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, would study the idea further at its next meeting in early October.
“I believe we have now reached the point where this question should no longer be debated, it should be tested in a carefully designed prospective clinical study,” Edouard Lhomme, first author of the new study and a professor at the University of Bordeaux, in France, told STAT via email. “Preparedness is not only about developing the next generation of vaccines, it is also about rapidly learning whether the tools we already have can help save lives.”
