Oxford develops vaccines against Ebola and Marburg viruses

Filovirus hemorrhagic fever is an infectious disease with a high mortality rate, often leading to hemorrhage, multiple organ failure, and death. Causative viruses include Ebola (Sudan strain, Bundibugyo) and Marburg.

In particular, Ebola virus disease causes high fever, headache, muscle pain, diarrhea, vomiting, rash, and bleeding inside and outside the body. The mortality rate can be up to 50-90% depending on the strain. As for Marburg virus disease, it causes fever, severe headache, diarrhea, bleeding, and multi-organ failure; Mortality rates ranged from 24-88% during epidemics.

Currently, there is no specific treatment for these diseases; treatment is mainly supportive to control symptoms. Patients need to be strictly isolated to prevent an outbreak.

Regarding prevention, the world has two licensed vaccines to prevent Ebola virus, there is no vaccine to prevent Sudan or Marburg virus. Meanwhile, two viruses are the cause of many recent disease outbreaks in the sub-Saharan region.

Therefore, Oxford experts focused on developing multivalent vaccines, allowing proactive vaccination of high-risk groups, instead of just reacting when an outbreak has occurred. Artificial intelligence will be used to design the antigen, then tested on two other platforms including Oxford’s ChAdOx vaccine and Moderna’s mRNA. Potential candidates will be evaluated preclinically before proceeding to phase I clinical trials in the UK, to determine safety and immunogenicity.

In early January, the project received $26.7 million in funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the European Union’s Horizon Europe program. The team that will conduct the research includes Vaccine Group Oxford, Institute of Pandemic Science (Oxford University), Institute of Drug Discovery at the University of Leipzig, and Moderna Biotechnology Company.

This initiative also contributes to promoting CEPI’s “100 Day Mission” program, the goal of shortening vaccine development time to 100 days from the discovery of a new pathogen. The data obtained will supplement the “Disease