Ebola vaccine trials fast-tracked by international consortium, including GSK

In the wake of the devastating outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, an unprecedented international consortium has been assembled to accelerate collaborative multi-site trials of a candidate Ebola vaccine.

A candidate Ebola vaccine could be given to healthy volunteers in the UK, The Gambia and Mali as early as September, as part of a series of safety trials of potential vaccines aimed at preventing the disease that has killed more than 1,400 people in the current outbreak in West Africa.

Human trials of this candidate vaccine, being co-developed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK), are to be accelerated with funding from an international consortium in response to the Ebola epidemic, which the World Health Organization recently declared a public health emergency of international concern.