By Jennifer Rigby, Mariam Sunny and Siddhi Mahatole
June 1 (Reuters) – Global health organisation CEPI will give roughly $60 million to Moderna and to two other groups to accelerate the development of shots against Ebola Bundibugyo, the deadly virus that has swept through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations was one of the early investors that helped to develop a vaccine at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Richard Hatchett, head of CEPI, told Reuters it was possible to get vaccines against Ebola Bundibugyo ready for trials within a couple of months.
There are no approved vaccines or treatments for Ebola Bundibugyo.
“Every day counts in the race against this deadly disease,” Hatchett said.
He also said the promise of vaccines on “a not infinitely distant horizon” should help to start conversations about who would buy it and fund any roll-out.
But he cautioned vaccine development can be unpredictable and the challenging security situation in eastern Congo would make trials complex.
The outbreak has caused 282 confirmed cases, including 42 deaths, and around 1,100 suspected cases, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
In addition to the deaths in Congo, nine cases have been confirmed in Uganda, including one death.
The global health agencies have declared the outbreak a public health emergency.
EARLY CLINICAL TESTING OF MODERNA VACCINE CANDIDATE
CEPI has committed up to $50 million to support preclinical development and early clinical testing of Moderna’s investigational Ebola Bundibugyo vaccine candidate.
The funding would also support manufacturing and progression to later-stage trials if early data are positive, Moderna said.
CEPI said it would also invest up to $8.6 million for a shot developed by the University of Oxford and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, and an initial $3.2 million for a vaccine developed by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
IAVI’s single-dose Bundibugyo vaccine candidate uses the same technology as Merck’s approved vaccine Ervebo for the Zaire strain, the first strain of Ebola to be discovered in what was then Zaire and is now Democratic Republic of Congo.
It has shown survival benefit in animal studies.
Oxford’s candidate, ChAdOx1 Bundibugyo, uses the same technology as that of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
Hatchett said Oxford and Serum had demonstrated in a different outbreak last year – Rift Valley Fever in Mauritania and Senegal – that they could make doses ready for trial in around six weeks, far quicker than typical timescales that have in the past run to years.
Once a vaccine is developed, Hatchett said the next challenge was ensuring access to the shots where they are needed. He said 300,000 doses of Ervebo were needed to bring the 2018-2020 Ebola Zaire outbreak in a similar region of Congo under control.
Separately, global vaccine alliance Gavi on Friday committed up to $50 million to the Ebola response, and the World Bank’s Pandemic Fund announced up to $220.6 million in grants.
(Reporting by Mariam Sunny and Siddhi Mahatole in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala, Vijay Kishore, Devika Syamnath and Barbara Lewis)
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