New vaccines against ebola virus

Between 2013 and 2016 there was a major outbreak of the Ebola virus in several West African countries with more than 28,500 cases and 11,000 deaths, for the first time cases were reported outside Africa, one of them a nurse in Spain. Fortunately, up to five vaccine prototypes have been produced with up to 80% efficacy against the most virulent viral type, the Zaire ebolavirus.

WHO (world health organization) declared a pandemic outbreak as an international public health emergency, in this context as published in the Journal of Virology, an international study led by researchers from the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) has developed five new prototypes of vaccine against the virus.

Using the same strategy previously employed to try to generate vaccines against chikunguña, hepatitis C or AIDS, scientists have created several ebola vaccine candidates that express two highly immunogenic proteins of the virus, proteins that efficiently activate the immune response.

These proteins come from the two most deadly species of Ebola: Zaire ebolavirus and Sudan ebolavirus. The expression of both proteins would generate viral particles similar in both morphology and size to the wild virus and therefore give the vaccines developed broad immunological properties.