Long-awaited Ebola vaccine has been on the shelf for 15 years

“We thought it might be one that couldn’t be seen,” says Geisbert. “We thought wrong.”

Concerned about the knowledge gap, in 2011 he decided to change the vaccine, which led to research on lobsters. In the same study, they also tested the existing Ebola vaccine on the Bundibugyo population, but it did not provide 100 percent protection.

If the 2012 outbreak had occurred after the larger outbreak in Zaire, Geisbert says, it is possible that pharmaceutical companies would have been able to sell vaccines that protect against the Bundibugyo strain.

But with the current epidemic fighting 2013 to 2016 in terms of size and scope, efforts to exercise are moving forward. Geisbert suspects the WHO’s experience with Ervebo is one of the reasons they favor the vaccine candidate, who is actually “Bundibugyo Ervebo,” he says.

The WHO also envisioned the success of an rVSV-like vaccine targeting Sudan’s Ebola strain in a ring vaccine trial in 2025.

The suitability of Bundibugyo’s rVSV vaccine for ring vaccination was supported by a 2023 study showing that most monkeys were protected against the virus even if they were known to have been vaccinated. This is necessary for the ring vaccine to work. While the researchers vaccinated the monkeys just 20 minutes after exposure, the proof-of-concept contrasts with Moderna’s and the University of Oxford’s developing candidates.

“There hasn’t been a lot of development since the 2023 study, because we didn’t expect to see those complications and because historically there have been low mortality rates,” said Courtney Woolsey, lead author of the paper (Geisbert was a co-author) and an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

“No one is making money off of these vaccines,” he adds, “so there are barriers to funding and advancing the vaccine that people may not be able to monetize.”

The nonprofit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has awarded $3.2 million to develop and begin testing the materials needed to develop Gesbert’s vaccine, which would be the first phase of human trials.

“Extensive data on safety and past events” from the rVSV vaccine used to combat the Zaire outbreak “could help accelerate the approval process if it is shown to be effective,” Rachael Bonawitz, director of the filovirus disease program at CEPI, tells WIRED via email, adding that developers will also be able to build on existing production methods.

“Even if it’s not used in this outbreak, we hope that there will be medical tools that can be used in humans in future outbreaks,” says Geisbert, “because they will probably happen again.”

Although promising, there is a chance that his vaccine will not work. Scientists were unable to obtain the Bundibugyo virus for testing because of the stretched conditions in the DRC and the difficulty and difficulty of obtaining and shipping refrigerated blood back to the US. Although scientists believe that the current strain is about 98 percent the same as the strain that caused the previous epidemics, that 2 percent unknown presents the risk that the vaccine may not be as effective as it was against previous strains.

“If you look at the results it’s not different enough that I can predict there might be a problem, but there’s nothing wrong,” says Geisbert.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in New York will prepare vaccine candidates for production. The non-profit biomedical research organization focuses on developing vaccines for diseases around the world where development funding is lacking.

“The pill is given, and I just sit back and hope it works, whether it’s the vaccine, whether it’s someone else’s vaccine,” says Geisbert.