Ebola Vaccine Tests Resume

By Marta Falconi 

ZURICH--A Geneva hospital said Monday it was resuming tests of an experimental Ebola vaccine licensed by Merck & Co. after a three-week pause in the trial to assess reports of mild joint pain in volunteers.

In a statement, the University Hospitals of Geneva said a second test group of 56 people will receive injections of the vaccine, which is known by the code name VSV-ZEBOV, at a lower dose than the initial group of volunteers. The test, which is being conducted on healthy volunteers, will continue through the end of the month with final results expected in March.

The study team suspended the Geneva trial on Dec. 11 as a precaution following reports of mild joint pain in some test subjects. On Monday, the hospital said 10 of the initial 59 volunteers reported joint inflammations roughly two weeks after receiving the injection.

The symptoms disappeared without treatment, the hospital said.

The study team is lowering the dosage to 300,000 vaccine particles for the second group of volunteers, instead of 10 million or 50 million particles that were used in the first part of the study. The hospital said the lower dosage should be better tolerated by the trial participants but still trigger the production of enough antibodies needed to fend off the Ebola virus.

Merck said in an email that they were aware of the trial's resumption and looked forward to final results of the study.

In November, Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., agreed to pay NewLink Genetics Corp. of Ames, Iowa, $30 million for the rights to the vaccine. Merck will also pay an additional $20 million and royalties on sales if the vaccine meets certain development targets.

Ebola has claimed over 7,900 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the current outbreak is concentrated, according to the World Health Organization. A total of 20,381 confirmed, suspected or probable cases of Ebola cases have been recorded so far in the three countries.

The disease spreads via bodily fluids and causes high fever and internal bleeding. Currently no vaccines are available to protect against Ebola.

Write to Marta Falconi at [e-mail]

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