A
draft road map for the expedited development, testing, manufacture,
delivery and financing of Ebola vaccines has been published by a global
group of experts supported by the Wellcome Trust. The development and
delivery of safe and effective vaccines would make a huge contribution
to containing Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as
improving responses to future outbreaks and providing a model for
vaccine development against other emerging infectious disease, the
expert group has concluded.
The
panel of 26 international experts, convened by the Wellcome Trust and
the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the
University of Minnesota, explains how the substantial scientific,
financial, social and logistical challenges to rapid Ebola vaccine
development and deployment can be overcome through collaboration between
governments, industry and philanthropic bodies.
It
highlights the potential need for multiple Ebola vaccines with
different characteristics, which might enable different vaccination
strategies such as ring-vaccination to prevent an outbreak from
spreading, and prophylactic vaccination of highrisk individuals such as
healthcare workers. The recommendations are made in the interim report
of Team B, which is co-chaired by Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the
Wellcome Trust, and Professor Michael Osterholm, Director of CIDRAP.
The
group is called “Team B” in recognition of the principal role played by
the World Health Organisation and national governments in leading the
international Ebola response.
Dr
Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust and co-chair of Team B,
said: “As Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone make encouraging progress in
containing Ebola, we must not lose sight of the immense contribution
that a safe and effective vaccine would make towards controlling both
this and future epidemics. We need urgent global collaboration between
governments, industry and philanthropy to ensure candidate vaccines
progress through trials to manufacture and delivery as swiftly as
possible.
“The
draft road map we publish today, agreed by a global group of experts,
offers solutions to the great scientific, social, logistical and
financial challenges of delivering an Ebola vaccine on this urgent
timescale. It is a living document that will evolve as we learn more
about Ebola and the candidate vaccines that are available. As well as
being of great value in the present crisis, it will enable vaccine
strategies to begin without delay in future outbreaks, and provide a
model for vaccine development in response to other emerging infectious
diseases.”
The
Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving
health. The Wellcome Trust has provided approximately £10 million
funding in response to the Ebola epidemic, which has enabled
unparalleled international collaboration across the public, private and
not-forprofit sectors to tackle the crisis. This includes trials of
potential vaccines and treatments, in addition to public health, social
and humanitarian research.
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