Single dose Ebola vaccine is safe, effective in monkeys against outbreak strain

Prior to this study, scientists had no information about how monkeys vaccinated with VSV-EBOV would respond to a challenge with EBOV-Makona, which has spread throughout West Africa. Previous animal studies demonstrated that VSV-EBOV could successfully protect monkeys against the first EBOV strain recognized, Mayinga, in 1976, and against EBOV-Kikwit, a strain that emerged in Central Africa in 1995. This new study shows that certain immune responses induced by VSV-EBOV are similar against all three viruses. The scientists, from NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Division of Intramural Research, concluded from these findings that VSV-EBOV likely would be equally protective against different EBOV strains.

The group also observed that the experimental VSV-EBOV vaccine appears to provide initial protection by triggering innate virus-fighting host responses; these responses partially protected animals challenged with EBOV-Makona within a week after vaccination. Animals vaccinated more than a week before viral challenge developed antibodies, an adaptive immune response, that were shown to be critical for protection.